The semifinals on Saturday were mostly meh.  Berdych crushed Tursunov in one semi.  Anytime he went for a big shot, Tursunov made an error or couldn’t reach the shot.  Gilles Simon didn’t fare much better against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga making more errors than usual.  Neither loser won more than 4 games.

The final, by contrast, was much closer, and really, statistically, should have gone to Berdych.  This isn’t just because Berdych had won their previous four meetings, but it was also because Berdych played such good tennis in the first two sets, and yet still only split sets. Alas, I have to say statistically since I couldn’t watch the math live on television.

Tennis Channel is an embarrassment of riches.  There are too many tournaments being played (3 men’s tournaments and then women’s tournaments too) and not enough hours to show them.  This week, with no Nadal, Tennis Channel has skipped the Buenos Aires tournament.  Normally, they might skip all but Acapulco in the golden swing but with fans desperate to see Nadal, Tennis Channel made the wise decision to televise Chile and Brazil.

Let’s not forget that Tennis Channel also televises women’s matches.  Women are playing in Memphis and Tennis Channel has opted to show a LOT of women’s tennis including a preference to show a rerun of the shortened final yesterday rather than show the men’s Marseille final live, and instead postponing that until 12 hours later.  To be fair, they’re covering Memphis, a local US event, more this week after treating San Jose as something of an afterthought last week favoring Rotterdam and Brazil last week, despite Americans Isner and Querrey doing well in San Jose.

It goes to show that when you have a specialized tennis channel, you can focus your attention on what you think fans want which is to see Federer and Nadal.  In the past, when Americans were enjoying dominance, the big stations like NBC and CBS clearly favored Americans.  Given the choice between, say, two Swedes (like Wilander and Edberg) playing each other in a close match and McEnroe thrashing someone, they’d always show McEnroe.  These days, folks know it’s better to show Roger Federer than Mardy Fish.

Due to this, Tennis Channel can barely show what they want to live, or they do it in a peculiar way, such as this weekend, as mentioned earlier, preferring reruns to live matches.  Admittedly, only all but the most ardent fans would be seated on their couches like college football junkies watching matches all day long, but the channels do afford this, especially since TC only has to purchase the rights to rebroadcast the tournament rather than to send their own people there to televise.

So I had to watch this match on a computer looking at stats.

Berdych took the first set off a break.  The second set, Berdych dominated statistically, at least, on his own serve.  He dropped maybe 5 points on serve, winning close to 90% on first and second serves.  Yet, it wasn’t enough because Tsonga did the one thing he had to do.  Hold his own serve.  It doesn’t matter how one plays against a dominant server provided you can hold your own serve.  While Tsonga had to fend off break points and Berdych never saw one, once it got to tiebreak, Tsonga only needed a mini-break. and he got it to win 8-6.

The third set, it seems, hinged on Berdych’s serve percentage and serve efficiency coming down probably due to the disappointment of losing the second set.  In the tbird set, he was more vulnerable on both first and second serves, and ultimately, couldn’t overcome an early break which Tsonga rode out to the set, despite a few hiccups that gave Berdych some brief hope to come back.

So it goes to show how a very good performance sometimes translates to a loss.  Both players looked very solid in their first post Australian Open match, and this may bode well for the rest of the year.

Buenos Aires

David Ferrer will meet Stan Wawrinka in the finals.  Ferrer had the easier time crushing Tommy Robredo 63 62 while Wawrinka, as expected, had to fight harder to beat Nicolas Almagro winning 63 75.

Wawrinka is still looking for a nice breakthrough match after a lengthy loss to Djokovic in Melbourne, then a lengthy lost to the Czech team in doubles in the Davis Cup match, and finally succumbing to Berdych in the reverse singles.

Ferrer leads the head-to-head 6-3 and will still be favored to beat the Swiss player, but recall Almagro being on the precipice of beating Ferrer in Melbourne.  Almagro played not too bright and created way too many errors and eventually ran out of gas in the fifth set.  This suggests a player like Almagro can play with Ferrer provided he plays within himself.  It should make for an interesting final.

Memphis

Today, Kei Nishikori will face Feliciano Lopez.  Lopez had a great year about two years ago, but now his rank has slipped so much that if the Spanish team were to field singles players only in Davis Cup by ranking alone, he’d be on the fourth team, as he’s the 7th ranked Spaniard at 47 in the world.  This probably says a lot more about the strength of the Spanish players in the top 100 than anything else (only the French can compete with so many good players).

Nishikori had the easier route to the finals.  He played Australia’s second ranked player, Marinko Matosevic, who has had a great week and had been voted as the most improved player of 2012, having jumped about 100 spots into the top 50.  Alas, Matosevic ran into a problem that affected Murray in Melbourne.  He had a blister and it became too painful to play, so he retired in the second set.

Lopez, by contrast, had to work hard to beat a rejuvenated Denis Istomin, and was taken to 3 sets.

The two have only met once, two years ago in Barcelona on clay.  Two things: Nishikori had a nice breakthrough last year, and 2011 was more of a recovery year for Nishikori, and clay is Nishikori’s weakest surface.  Even so, Lopez will feel some confidence, but Nishikori has been deeper in tournaments more recently than Lopez, though Lopez had nice success back in 2010.

Nishikori is likely to be favored, but it will be interesting.  Istomin played Lopez like a righty playing his backhands crosscourt into the Lopez forehand, so they were involved in exchanges from Istomin’s backhand to Lopez’s forehand (who is a lefty).  Istomin didn’t seem interested in his forehand to Lopez’s backhand.  Lopez likes to slice on his backhand though he has a good enough topspin backhand.

Nishikori is likely to do his usual strategy which is to move Lopez side to side.  Lopez will want to take advantage of his lefty spin serve to see if that bothers Nishikori.  That will be the primary key whether Nishikori wins or not (his ability to handle Lopez’s lefty shots).