Daily Tennis News Update – Nice, Rome, Rain Delays (05/20/12)

Written by: Staff on 20th May 2012

Daily Tennis News Update - Nice, Rome, Rain Delays (05/20/12)

at the BNP Paribas Open tennis in Indian Wells, California, USA 11 March 2012. |

Rome

Singles – Final: Postponed

The women’s final took almost three hours of court time, plus two hours of rain delay. By the time that was over, they were looking at major traffic problems. So the singles final between Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal has been postponed until Monday. This means, incidentally, that we will not be doing rankings reports, or movers, until Tuesday.

Doubles – Final: Granollers/M Lopez def. Kubot/Tipsarevic 6-3 6-2
Spain is going to have a very interesting time picking an Olympic team. Nadal, Ferrer, Almagro, Feliciano Lopez, Verdasco — the singles is tricky enough. But doubles? Marcel Granollers has a good case there, and it looks like he and Mac Lopez would be a good team. In addition to this title, they made the finals at Acapulco and Barcelona, plus Stuttgart last year. And Lopez won Indian Wells with Nadal. Now if only they could do it away from clay….
Lukasz Kubot has to be feeling a little better about himself, too. He did have a final earlier this year, at Bucharest, but that was a weak event. This is, in terms of points, the best result of his career, even if it didn’t result in a title. It’s also the best result for Janko Tipsarevic. Neither one is likely to play Olympic doubles — the Polish spot will be taken by Fyrstenberg/Matkowski, and Nenad Zimonjic will presumably pick his partner for Serbia — but at least the money is nice.

Nice

It turns out that there is noting to report in the main draw. The rain that affected Rome also reached Nice. They were able to finish the qualifying, but no main draw matches completed. Xavier Malisse managed to build a 7-5 1-0 lead on Yen-Hsun Lu before things stopped.

One of the qualifiers is pretty noteworthy: Thomaz Bellucci made the main draw and will face Donald Young in the first round.

Dusseldorf

It didn’t take long for the Americans to effectively eliminate themselves from the quest for the title here. The good news is, Andy Roddick played. The bad news is, he played like a guy who was coming back from a hip injury and who doesn’t like clay anyway. Carlos Berlocq of Argentina beat him 6-2 6-2. Ryan Harrison at least managed to be competitive — but Leonardo Mayer beat him 6-4 5-7 6-3, and the Americans had lost the tie. And since only one team per group can go to the final, the loss of a tie is about as good as a loss of the event. It’s not officially over for the Americans — but it probably is.

Russia managed an even less competitive start. Alex Bogomolov’s endless struggles resulted in a 6-0 6-2 loss at the hands of Germany’s Philipp Kohlschreiber.

Serbia may not have Novak Djokovic, but at least they have Viktor Troicki, so who got them off to a good start with a 6-3 7-6 victory over Ivan Dodig.

The day’s one really big shock came as Tatsuma Ito of Japan beat the Czechs’ Radek Stepanek 3-6 6-4 6-4. It’s still hard to believe Japan can go anywhere in this field, but it isn’t a good sign for the Czechs.

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Rome

Singles – Final: (2) Maria Sharapova def. (8) Li Na 4-6 6-4 7-6(7-5)
It’s a good thing these two have next week off. They’ll need the rest after this contest. After more than two and a half hours, and after fighting back from a 4-6 0-4 deficit, Maria Sharapova had to serve to stay in the match at 6-5 in the third set. After a long game in which she saved a match point, they ended up in the tiebreak — and the match was immediately suspended due to rain. So they had to wait several more hours to finish things off.
It’s the second title for Sharapova this year, both on clay, and her second straight Rome title. Talk about a change from her previous pattern! She has won two of the three clay events she played this year — and has no titles on other surfaces since Cincinnati 2011. Indeed, four of her last five titles have been on clay! She is now 28-5 this year (85%). And she already has 4540 points in 2012. That doesn’t mathematically clinch her for the year-end championships, but in practice, she looks set. That’s two qualifiers. (The other being, of course, Victoria Azarenka.) It’s interesting to look at the Race standings of the top few players:
Azarenka: 5765
Sharapova: 4540
Radwanska: 3536
S. Williams: 2515
Kerber: 2346
Li: 2091
Bartoli: 1818
Wozniacki: 1812
Stosur: 1721
Kvitova: 1685
Sharapova remains well behind Azarenka in the contest for the top spot. But it is already looking as if we have at most three contenders for the year-end #1: Azarenka, Sharapova, and Radwanska. And Sharapova appears to be the one most likely to do damage in Paris….
Li Na is still looking for her first title since Roland Garros 2011. But she picked up enough points to rise to #7 — and hence to earn a Top Eight Roland Garros seed. Given what she has to defend, that’s a pretty big deal….

Doubles – Final: (3) Errani/Vinci def. Makarova/Vesnina 6-2 7-5
What a run for Errani/Vinci! Titles at both Madrid and Rome! They are now 31-4 this year (meaning that they have won 89% of their matches), with five titles: Monterrey, Acapulco, Barcelona, Madrid, and Rome. They have won every clay tournament they have entered; their record on the dirt is 17-0. They aren’t quite Top Five yet, but suddenly they’re looking like the clear Roland Garros favorites — and if they win that, they will really climb.
Makarova/Vesnina have now lost back-to-back finals to Errani/Vinci. Vesnina too remains stuck below the Top Five. But Makarova appears bound for the Top Twenty. The Russians will be seeded at Roland Garros — and though titles seem to be out of their reach, they seem likely to do damage even so.