State of the Game – Part IV Djokovic, Federer, Murray Roll On

Written by: Staff on 1st March 2012

State of the Game - Part IV Djokovic, Federer, Murray Roll On

Andy Murray of Great Britain returns to Novak Djokovic of Serbia during their men's single semi-final match at the Australian Open Grand Slam tennis tournament in Melbourne, Australia, 27 January 2012. EPA/BARBARA WALTON |

The only real question today was who would be the fourth to join this awesome trio. Murray struggled a bit with Berdych giving up 2 breaks on 8 chances, but he controlled the match making 64% of his first serves and winning 14 of the 24 second serve points where he got the serve in. He got in a little trouble with 5 DFs, but he broke the big Czech 4 times and finished the match off in straight sets. Neither Djokovic nor Federer even allowed their opponents a single break point in their matches; in fact, Federer didn’t even face deuce on his serve against Youhzny. Tipsarevic put up a better fight against his Serbian teammate, but when crunch time came in the second set tie-breaker, Janko made two double faults. All in all, he seemed much too deferential to the defending champ.

That brought us to the third and most intriguing match of the day, Del Potro vs. Tsonga. It started out well with the only break points coming in the second game of the set; but Tsonga saved those and the two big men (in every sense of the word) moved on to the inevitable tie-breaker. Tsonga nearly took the first point and then mysteriously disappeared. He seemed to lose his rhythm as well as 6 of the next 7 points. Through the match there were many scintillating displays of artistic brilliance from Tsonga, but the weight of the Tandil, Argentina native seemed to be too much for Jo-Wilfred. When Juan Martin gets to set and fire, his artillery is just too big…for anyone. That’s what we saw in the 2009 US Open final with Fed and we have seen glimpses of it recently. Federer showed in the Rotterdam final that firepower was not as “sure-fire” as it had been 2 1/2 years ago. The rest of the weekend will tell us whether or not Del Potro has made any further progress in recovering his mojo.

As for the other quarterfinalists, there were no real surprises. It was disappointing to see Tipsarevic melt under the TB pressure against Novak, but not totally unexpected. I was really hoping to see Tsonga step up and play even better than he did last week in Marseille. Instead he imploded at the end of the first set. Sitting on the bench in the second set, already down two breaks, he looked like a little boy who had just lost his dog and was about to cry. I swear, I thought he looked like he was about to cry. The French players all demonstrate great creativity and wonderful shotmaking, but they need to get a new sports psychologist on their team!

Anyway, looks to be some great tennis in the semis tomorrow. Remember, Dubai ends on Saturday so be sure to set your DVR’s for tomorrow or tune in live on TennisTV if you get the chance. The men’s semis start Not Before 5:00PM in Dubai and they are 12 hours ahead of Pacific time. The second semi follows not before 7:00. That’s live on TennisTV.com. I’m not sure of the Tennis Channel schedulel, but I bet you can get it live on LiveScoreHunter.com as well.

As for the other events, they are moving on. Kohlshreiber and Sela have joined Matosevic and Gulbis in the bottom half quarters. Anderson/Malisse and Roddick/Istomin still to go there. It would be nice to see Andy get through there to test Isner again if John can handle Tomic tomorrow. Of course, they are just waking up in Acapulco so nothing to report from there as yet.

10sChiro

to see Parts I, II and III of “The State of the Game” and other articles by 10sChiro, go to

https://archive.10sballs.com/author/don/