Federer Wins Second Straight Title
Roger Federer returned from six weeks off rehabing an injured wrist and is playing in great form, winning the Paris Open, a Masters 1000 tennis tournament today, following his title at Basel last Sunday.
Fed's has now won 801 ATP matches, and is the only player to make the finals of all nine Masters 1000 events.
How confidently is Fed playing? In an earlier match, Fed put away a swinging forehand volley, from two-feet inside the baseline. Don't try that at home.
And Fed's serve: He won 29 out of 32 first serve points against Berdych, then closed out Tsonga by winning 15 points in a row on his serve. Should be an interesting year-end ATP World Cup, November 20-27 at The O2 in London. Fed is the defending champion and with five titles is tied with Pete Sampras and Ivan Lendl for the most Cup titles.
Fed won despite going without some sleep:
“It happened many times that she {the twins} wakes me up in the night this year, but I was not 25 times in the final,” he said. “I was hoping that during the night it would go well, but suddenly I was running with Mirka in the room to see if everything was okay. And she said, ‘Let's take her in our bed.’
I said, ‘Okay, let's do that.’ I didn't even question this. I just said okay. I can't have a fight at 4:00 in the morning with her.”
For tennis wonks that care about playing strategies, these two matches were a lesson in how to defang big hitters. Berdych and Tsonga had both beaten Fed at Wimbledon by taking the racquet out of his hand, simply hitting so hard Fed couldn't do much. Not this week.
Berdych's average groundstroke speed was nearly 80 mph when he beat Andy Murray on Friday, but against Fed that dropped by about 10 mph, because Fed kept him off balance. With Berdych stretching and lunging, he could rarely set up to pound his heavy forehands. Fed did that by serving wide, hitting short-and-wide forehands, and by running the Czech diagnonally, following a short-angled backhand with a deep ball to Berdych's forehand corner.
Against Tsonga, Fed attacked the second serve and hit wide to the Frenchman's weaker backhand. Here's a video of a good exchange from Sunday's final.
By the way, the volley-lob appears to have become the new, trendy shot in pro tennis. After Novak Djokovic ran Rafael Nadal ragged with several in the U.S. Open final, players were hitting this shot in numerous matches in Basel and Paris. Conventional wisdom used to be that this was a foolish, high-risk shot, but I only saw one occasion where the net player stuffed it down the lobber's throat. Every other time the lobee got run ragged from fetching a drop shot, to scrambling back for the lob.
ATP World Cup site: http://www.atpworldtour.com/Finals/2011.aspx
If the twins sleep through the night maybe Fed will get back to #1. Great stuff...thanks!
Posted by: Jack | November 14, 2011 at 01:48 PM
Well it would be nice to see Fed win one more major before he retires. One thing is for sure, he can still bring his game and he's still in great shape. Competition has been tough and now more diverse. Let's see how he does in 2012.
Posted by: Warren | November 18, 2011 at 04:25 PM