China, the site of the Shanghai Masters, has been on a quest.  They want to produce a top 200 male player.  Obviously, top 100 would be great too.  They’ve done plenty fine producing good women players, most notably, French Open champion, Li Na.  And they’ve done well enough producing players that can win a few games off top pros, just no one that’s ready to be reliably in the top 100.  As much as China has focused on great athletes, they’ve mostly focused on the Olympics.  Although tennis is in the Olympics, it’s not something China has cared about until the last ten years or so.

Japan is only a little ahead of China.  They’ve produced some good players over the years.  The best player they’ve produced is Kimiko Date who went as high as about 4 in the world in the 1990s, during the Steffi Graf era.  She was diminutive, but despite her stature, her ability to take the ball off the rise and direct it to a sideline, let her take on women of the “big babe” era, e.g. Mary Pierce, Lindsay Davenport, Jennifer Capriati.

The best male player, by contrast, only ever reached 46 in the world.  His name?  Shuzo Matsuoka.  He had a game that was good enough to go a few rounds at Wimbledon.  Matsuoka is also famous for indirectly creating the current medical timeout rule.  Once, while playing at the Open, Matsuoka severely cramped.  In those days, cramping was considered a physical conditioning problem, one that was not allowed treatment.  As he writhed with no one coming to help (he basically needed to default to get help), the audience sat agape.  It didn’t help this was broadcast for all to see and tennis was seen as being particularly cruel.  So, the rule was changed so players could seek treatment.

Kei Nishikori has long been seen as the next great Japanese player (at least, on the men’s side).  Nishikori is a contemporary of del Potro (they played as juniors).  Although he won a title a few years ago (back when Sam Querrey was winning his first title in 2008), Nishikori was injured for a fair part of 2009, and spent 2010 trying to get his ranking up again, and right now, it’s right at 47, one spot below the career high for Matsuoka.

It turns out the key to beating Tsonga is two-fold.  One, you need to figure out how to return his serve.  Two, Tsonga needs to be off his game some, perhaps hitting forehand errors.  This is what happened to Tsonga.  Although Tsonga took the first set in a tiebreak, Nishikori got a break in the second.  Even though Tsonga got the break back, Nishikori broke again and took the second set.  The two stayed pretty even in the third set, but at 5-4 down, with Tsonga trying to even the match, Nishikori kept coming up with decent returns.  At 30-40 down, Tsonga powered an ace out wide.  But Nishikori got to match point again.  Tsonga hit a second serve ace!  But Nishikori got to match point again.  Eventually, he hit a powerful backhand which Tsonga was unable to handle and the Japanese upset the Frenchman.

Tsonga is in eighth place for the year-end championship and thus is the most vulnerable to someone passing him.  Almagro is currently in ninth place and is still in the Shanghai event.

Let’s cover the upsets.  Fernando Verdasco lost to Juan Carlos Ferrero in three sets: 4-6, 6-3, 6-2.  Verdasco hasn’t been playing his best tennis, but wasn’t playing all the bad until he got crushed in Beijing by Berdych who won 12 games in a row after losing his own serve.

Giraldo defeated Jurgen Melzer (the 14th seed) in 3 sets.  He won 4-6, 6-4, 7-6.

Two of the “new fab four” teens lost today.  Ryan Harrison lost surprisingly easily to Matthew Ebden, 6-4, 6-2 of Australia.  David Ferrer, the 3rd seed, won two closes, 7-5, 7-6, to Milos Raonic.  Raonic even had set point but couldn’t convert.  This is Raonic’s third loss to Ferrer this year.

Top seed, Rafael Nadal, won fairly comfortably over Guillermo Garcia-Lopez, 6-3, 6-2.  Second seed Andy Murray didn’t even have to play.  Dmitry Tursunov was apparently injured after his opening round win.  Sixth seed, Tomas Berdych, beat countryman, Radek Stepanek, 6-4, 6-3.  Feliciano Lopez needed 3 sets to beat Alex Bogomolov.

Everyone is playing third round matches tomorrow.  Here’s the schedule:

  • Roddick vs Almagro
  • Ferrer vs. Ferrero
  • Wawrinka vs. Murray
  • Nadal vs Mayer
  • Lopez vs. Berdych
  • Tomic vs. Dolgopolov
  • Giraldo vs. Nishikori
  • Simon vs. Ebden

The intriguing match to me is Tomic vs. Dolgopolov.  Both players are great at disrupting other player’s rhythm.  It will be interesting to see what they do to one another.  Dolgopolov should be favored.  There’s a great opportunity in the Giraldo-Nishikori match.  Neither are ranked that high, so they should be happy not to meet someone ranked higher.  To be fair, they both eliminated seeds.  Gilles Simon has a good chance to move on as well.  He’s the kind of steady quick player that should bother Ebden.

There are lots of Spaniards in the top half: Nadal, Almagro, Ferrer, Ferrero, and Lopez.  All the Spaniards in the bottom half are already eliminated.

The tournament is holding reasonably to form.  Six of the top sixteen seeds have lost, but only 2 of the top 8 (Fish, Tsonga).  In particular, players looking to qualify for a spot at London are still in it, including Almagro and Simon.