Before we get started with how two of the top four players did today, let’s review what happened this week.

The grass season is among the shortest in the tennis calendar.  There’s the week after the French Open where Queen’s Club (officially, the Aegon Championships) and Halle (officially, the Gerry Weber Open) are played.  There’s the week after this, where Eastbourne and a tournament in the Netherlands are played, then two weeks of Wimbledon, and then Newport, in the US, where the tennis Hall of Fame is located.

Most of the top players, if they’re inclined to play, will play the first week, then train the second week, and then play Wimbledon.  There is the occasional exception.  David Ferrer doesn’t seem to mind playing the week before a Slam and thus play up to three weeks in a row.

Let’s see some highlights of this week.

(Queen’s) Denis Kudla has a breakout tournament

OK, today’s up-and-comers do well if they can reach the quarters of an ATP 250 event.  It’s something else when a teenaged Lleyton Hewitt won a tournament in Adelaide.  These days, a 20 year old Ukraine-born American, Denis Kudla, reached the quarterfinals of Queen’s beating Delbonis, Benoit Paire, and Kenny de Schepper to reach the quarters where he lost to Tsonga.  Kudla has a nice ability to move the ball around on his forehand and can attack with his backhand down the line, his so-called money shot, but he played some points a bit too cute, and had mental lapses that let the more experienced and powerful Tsonga control their quarterfinal encounter.

Kudla reached a quarterfinal two years ago in Newport which is a weaker field.  He beat Karlovic in the opener, then a much lower ranked Grigor Dimitrov, before losing to Michael Yani, a Duke grad.

(Queen’s/Halle) Old guys play resurgent tennis

How many times is Lleyton Hewitt going to make a comeback?  Like the venerable Tommy Haas, Hewitt has struggled with injuries, and keeps trying to come back.  Hewitt reached the semis of Queen’s beating Michael Russell, Grigor Dimitrov, Sam Querrey, and Juan Martin del Potro to reach the semis and play defending champ, Marin Cilic, who he lost to in 3 sets.

In Halle, Tommy Haas showed he can still play tennis whether it be clay or grass.  Haas beat Gulbis in the second round (having a bye in the first), then Monfils, before losing to Federer in three sets.

The Monfils match was an entertaining one.  At one point, in the latter parts of the second set, Monfils was at net trying to hit an overhead.  Instead, he let it drop, bounce between his legs, turn around 180, and tried to hit an overhead behind the back.  The ball landed in the center of the court where Haas had no trouble hitting it, and came to net.  Monfils’s pass just went wide.  Sometimes Monfil hotdogs it a bit too much.

Haas’s match against Federer was interesting.  In many ways, Haas plays like Federer, just without looking nearly as elegant.  He has a big serve, often goes for a big forehand or big backhand, but lacks many of Federer’s finesse shots.  He’s like James Blake, but without being as much of a head case.

Last year, Haas beat Federer in the finals.  Federer generally hopes to hold serve, and break about once a set.  This strategy can make a win precarious.  This time, Haas double faulted a bit too much at key moments and gave up both the second and third set to Federer who didn’t play particularly brilliant, but more steady than anything else.

The Haas-Federer semi was one of two semifinal matches that featured four one-handed backhand players (by contrast, Queen’s had all two-handed backhand players in the semis).  The other semi featured Mikhail Youzhny who, like Haas and Hewitt, seems to play good tennis for about a month a year.  Youzhny had a pretty easy win over Richard Gasquet, 6-3, 6-2, and will face Federer, a player the Russian has had poor results against.

(Halle) Federer gets a double bagel

You would think, with over 900 match wins, that Federer would have crushed his opponent love and love more than a handful of times.  Turns out, it’s not true.  Federer beat Mischa Zverev of Germany love and love in the quarterfinals.  This is only the second time he’s double-bageled a player in a best of 3 set match.  Turns out it’s quite rare.  Murray has done it twice.  Federer just did it twice.  Djokovic has only done it once.  Nadal has never beaten a player love and love.

(Queen’s) Murray plays for the first time since injury at Rome

Murray lost to Marcel Granollers in the second round at Rome due to a back injury.  Apparently, it was similar to the injury that afflicted him the previous year with Jarkko Nieminen.  Murray chose to skip the French Open and train for Wimbledon instead.  Because of that, Murray was a bit match light.  In other years, Murray has sometimes not worried about winning Queen’s and just aimed to play 2-3 matches before being “upset”.  However, given this is his first tournament in about 3-4 weeks, it makes sense for Murray to get as much match practice as possible.

Murray beat Nicolas Mahut in a match that lasted two days due to rain.  He had to complete the Mahut match, then beat Marinko Matosevic of Australia in two easy sets.  He beat Benjamin Becker in two close sets in the quarterfinals.

The semifinals was delayed due to rain for a few hours.  Originally, Hewitt was supposed to play Cilic on center court.  They played a handful of games and then were pulled due to rain.  Because the matches were delayed, they decided to put both semis on at the same time, but because Murray-Tsonga was the featured match, they were put on center court, and the Cilic-Hewitt match put on a side court which, despite the age of Queen’s Club, lacks Hawkeye.  Indeed, Halle has another advantage over Queen’s Club.  They have a retractable roof.  So when there was rain there, they were able to close the roof and continue play.

One reason Tsonga has not broken through is his occasional habit of losing concentration and making lots of silly errors.  For the first set and a half, Tsonga looked in control of the match as he took the first set, and kept even in the second.  Murray won a tight game around 3-2 in the second set to avoid a break, and then secured a break of his own, and took the second set.  This seemed to relax the Scot.  By the third set, Tsonga found himself in a 0-40 hole.  Although he fought off all break points, he found himself down a break, then deuce, a few more times before Murray finally got the break.  The next time around, Tsonga found himself 0-40 down once again, but couldn’t get out of the hole he dug himself, and went down double break.

In the cool blustery weather, Cilic was able to beat Hewitt at roughly the same time Murray won his match over Tsonga.  Cilic, if one recalls, beat Nalbandian by disqualification when Nalbandian, in a fit of anger, kicked the wooden barrier where a linesman was sitting.  The material, made of wood, splintered and drew some blood from the linesman.  In a weird ceremony, Nalbandian had to sit and receive his runner up trophy, but I believe he was penalized the prize money and the points for being disqualified.

The two will play early tomorrow to avoid rain if possible.