Last year, with rain imminent on Super Saturday, tournament officials moved the first semifinals to 11 AM. When it looked like it wasn’t possibly to wait until the conclusion of the first semifinal to finish, they started the second semifinal in an adjoining court at 12:30 AM. That match featured Andy Murray playing Rafael Nadal. The two finished a little over two sets, before rain canceled play for the remainder of the day.
Critics wondered why they didn’t run both matches at the same time because of the rain. Some felt the winner of that match (Andy Murray) had a disadvantage. Murray had to play two sets on Sunday, while Roger had the day off. Roger got off to a quick start on Monday and never looked back.
With three of the four quarterfinals completed, they moved up the Rafael Nadal-Fernando Gonzalez match up 30 minutes to 7 PM and managed barely two sets before stopping play. Had they started at, say, 5:30 PM, they would have likely completed the match on time, and not needed to push this match to two days later, thus disrupting the entire play. Had their match been completed, they could have played the semifinals on Saturday as originally scheduled.
Let’s see where things stand. Federer is scheduled to play Djokovic. They just played in Cincinnati, and Federer beat Djokovic much like Murray, by starting off really fast. Djokovic has had success against Federer, having beaten him twice this year, but Federer was struggling pretty much until the French Open. One could argue that the French was still a struggle for Roger. Wimbledon went very smooth for Roger except for the marathon final. Since then, Roger had one bad match against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, but was on the edge of winning that match, before collapsing. This is a tough match to call. Roger will be favored to win since Djokovic didn’t play a great match to beat Verdasco, but players go through phases where they play poorly one match and then well the next (compare Nadal’s match against Almagro and Nadal’s match against Gonzalez).
The Nadal-Gonzalez match will be interesting. Nadal seemed to hurt himself in the first set, and it may be one reason Gonzalez was able to hang with Nadal. But one wonders if the extra days will help or hurt Nadal. If Nadal’s injury in serious, it may affect his play. He seems able to gut out matches, but in this case, it’s quite literal. If Nadal does get past Gonzalez, he faces a big challenge in Juan Martin del Potro. del Potro played Nadal well even when Nadal was hitting well (back in Miami). It’ll be a tall order for Nadal to get past del Potro, and that’s assuming Gonzalez doesn’t trip Nadal up.
The weather should be cool enough that any fitness issues that Juan Martin del Potro has shouldn’t bother him. It’s surprising, in a single year, that del Potro has made this huge leap in his game. At the time, Gilles Simon had also broken into the top 10. But while Simon’s game has dropped a fair bit in 2009, del Potro continues to improve.
Tomorrow, at noon, Nadal and Gonzalez will complete the rest of their match. The men’s semifinals will be moved to Sunday, at noon and 4 PM. The men’s final will again be played on Monday at 4 PM.
Alas, the rain did not go away, and talk of putting a roof on a stadium has arisen for the second year in a row. We’ll see if it happens.
