It’s tough to gauge Rafa’s game. In the last round, Rafael Nadal played Nicolas Almagro, and the two traded plenty of breaks. If a guy like Almagro can break Nadal so handily, how would Nadal fare against a more talented Gael Monfils?
But each match is different. Just ask Andy Murray who played a brilliant match against Taylor Dent and looked every bit the favorite to win the tournament. He followed up that performance with a clunker, losing in straight sets to Marin Cilic. How could Murray play so well in one match and look so flat and listless in the next?
Nadal is so competitive that when he plays poorly, he still wins. But he needed to step up his game to play perhaps the most athletic player in the game, Gael Monfils.
Nadal, by the way, had had his abdominals taped up. Reporters had been hounding him about whether he was injured or not and how that was affecting his game. Nadal, for his part, refused to elaborate, claiming he was happy to play, and he’d do his best to win, which is, after all, what Nadal does best, injured or not.
Rafael Nadal rarely plays a guy that goes all out to play him. Most players know Rafa comes up with amazing angles. He hits the ball so fast that it’s hard to overpower him. If Rafa’s near a ball, he can usually get it back over the net. Roger Federer generally hits angles that are outside of Nadal’s reach when he goes for his big shots. Rafa can’t do magic if he can’t touch the ball.
Monfils must have missed this memo, because he opted for a strategy that required every bit of his fitness to implement. In easily the most athletic, the most entertaining match of the US Open, heightened by the fact that it was a night match, the Monfils-Nadal match was an exhibition of power and speed sustained over four sets. This was a match with a crescendo early on and a somewhat denouement towards the end. Audiences were given a giddy thrill ride of two of the game’s best athletes put their immense skills on display.
It’s too bad Monfils is injured so much. He nearly pulled off the Grand Slam in juniors when he won 3 of 4 Slams in 2003. The fourth was won by Andy Murray at the US Open. He’s one of those guys that you wonder if he can ever fulfill his immense talent. This year was Marat Safin’s last, another talented guy that never quite did all he could, and Monfils is far more athletic.
This match started with Monfils blasting balls at Nadal with huge swipes, alternating with hard crosscourts with uncanny down the line shots. Time and again, he’d try to bludgeon Nadal, and time and again, Nadal would retrieve. If Nadal’s knees are bothering him, you couldn’t tell watching this match. Nadal moved as well as he ever has. For a while, it seemed Nadal had met his match, a guy who could run down Nadal’s hard struck shots and hit them back with the force of a tidal wave.
Monfils does such a good job of running shots down that he could try the normally insane strategy of going toe to toe with Nadal. Most players play more conservatively and Nadal generally obliges them by playing a conservative game with them. Not Monfils. Generally acknowledged as tennis’s best athlete, his ability to stretch, slide, and contort himself to get shots is short of unreal, and it takes only another superior athlete in Rafael Nadal to bring out just how good Monfils is.
By the way, Rafael is two “men” when it comes to his muscles. Most people know Rafa have huge biceps, at least, huge for a tennis player. However, most people aren’t into weight lifting, so only those who are notice something odd. If you look at Rafa from his back, you see that his arm look quite ordinary. It turns out Rafa has spent most of his arm work on his biceps pretty much neglecting his triceps. Quite the contrast to Gael Monfils who works his entire arm.
And back to tennis!
Monfils started off with an early break, based on his speed that allowed him to fetch shots from all over. It looked as if Nadal would be in trouble, facing a fitter, more athletic player. But you can never count out Nadal. He competes as hard as anyone. He gets back so many balls. Monfils would hit half a dozen amazing shots and still Nadal was hitting. There were rallies where an amazing shot would occur about 10 shots in, and it would finish another 10 shots later as the audience was still catching its breath that the point was still going on.
Nadal would get a break and the two would head to tiebreak where Monfils would take control and take the first set.
Going into sets 2 and 3, Nadal was starting to win the longer rallies. Because Nadal gets so many balls back, you have to hit 2, 3, 4, 5 “winners” before you can win a point. And sometimes you don’t win after all that. The balls Monfils was clubbing for winners were starting to fall long or fall wide, and Nadal was starting to exert control of the match.
The fourth set wasn’t too much different. Although Nadal’s serve wasn’t as zippy as it normally is, Monfils wasn’t able to easily attack Nadal’s serve, which meant they were starting even, which favors Nadal. Another break in the fourth set, and Monfils journey at the US Open came to an end.
Tsonga’s journey was also cut short, in the other hard-hitting match of the day. Tsonga is also another talented hitter. Perhaps lacking the kind of movement of Monfils, Tsonga has great touch. Commentators criticized his basic tennis IQ, saying he didn’t know where to volley, but otherwise, Tsonga’s ability to hit all sorts of shots puts him near the top of talented players in the game.
Meanwhile, Fernando Gonzalez does what he does best. Hit forehands. When Gonzo is at the top of his game, he’s all forehand. He can hit winners from anywhere on the court. The closest player to Gonzo in this department might be Juan Martin del Potro. Gonzo gets so much torque that it’s surprising he’s never been ranked much higher than he is. Gonzo’s serve isn’t particularly huge and his backhand was more of a liability in the past. Players that wanted to beat Gonzo would play his backhand. Over the years, he’s improved his backhand, but at 29 years old, he’s one of the older guys on tour. Still, with players like Haas, Santoro, and a whole host of others, a player like Gonzalez has been surprisingly durable and may still have a few years of good tennis left in him.
Tsonga, meanwhile, is more up-and-down. He’ll hit great shots followed by inexplicable misses. If the match boiled down to one thing, it was Gonzalez’s experience, where he took advantage of more games. Critically, after splitting sets, Gonzalez took the third set, Gonzalez had enough momentum and took the fourth as well.
What does Gonzalez get as a reward? He gets to play Nadal. After Nadal dispatched Monfils, who hits great on both sides, Gonzalez may not pose a big challenge for Nadal. Against most players, Gonzalez’s forehand is often too awesome. But Nadal, being Nadal, is able to get his huge forehands back forcing him to his more shots. Monfils managed to go toe to toe with Nadal early on in their match, but as the match wore on, Monfils couldn’t keep hitting so many great shots in a row.
At the end of the match, Nadal seems quite poised to take the final piece of the Grand Slam pie. He still has his work plenty cut out for him. Even if he gets past Gonzalez, Juan Martin del Potro would be his biggest challenge yet. del Potro had a convincing win against Nadal early in Nadal’s return to tennis after his long break, but that Nadal is not the Nadal playing today. Even so, del Potro serves huge and poses all sorts of problems for Nadal.
The quarterfinals are set after yesterday’s matches. Roger Federer plays Robin Soderling again. The two met in the French final, then again in the fourth round of Wimbledon. They’ll face yet again in the quarterfinals of the US Open. Although Roger has never lost to Soderling, and will be favored once again to beat Soderling, Soderling is a tough cookie and is likely to pose more problems on the hard courts than he did at either the French or Wimbledon. Federer just came off a fairly easy win over Robredo, and usually plays better as the tournament goes longer.
Novak Djokovic plays Fernando Verdasco. Many feel Verdasco has a pretty good chance of winning. Verdasco, like Tsonga, can be very up and down. If you can run down a lot of his shots, he can make mistakes. However, Verdasco also possesses a huge lefty forehand. Djokovic has his work cut out for him.
We’ve already talked about Gonzalez playing Nadal. The last quarterfinals is del Potro vs. Cilic. Commentators feel Cilic is the best mover of the big guys. He doesn’t hit with the same kind of pace as the other big guys, but still does quite well. The two have only played once, at this year’s Australian Open, which del Potro won in four sets. It’s hard to say whether Cilic’s victory over Murray is meaningful. Murray played poorly, but he pointed out that Cilic also got more balls back and played steadier than usual, especially after the first set.
Expect this to be a tough match, but one that goes del Potro’s way.
We’re now getting to the interesting part of the tournament. The lowest seed left is Marin Cilic seeded 16. Contrast this with last year when Gilles Muller and Mardy Fish were unseeded players making the quarterfinals and del Potro was the low seed at 17.
Oh yes, because Murray was a finalist last year and fell in the fourth round, Nadal should regain his number 2 ranking after the US Open.
