Ah, Ernests, Ernests, Ernests.

You’ve been a fan favorite for years now.  Everyone sees you’re clearly talented.  A year ago, you looked like you were going to break through.  You won Delray Beach over Ivo Karlovic.  You upset Roger Federer.  You took a set off Rafa Nadal.  Everyone thought, finally–finally, you were going to be the player everyone hoped you would be.  You lost early in the French due to an injury, and the rest of the year, you went back to your losing ways.  And those losing ways didn’t stop in 2010.  It continued through 2011.

So your ranking, which you had worked up to about 30 in the world started heading back down.  As of the start of the tournament, you were 84th in the world.

To be fair, you’ve been sick.  You’ve split up with your previous coach, Hernan Gumy, who had family issues, and paired up with Guillermo Canas who was a guy that used to beat Federer in his prime.  He’s been reworking your forehand.  He’s been working on your confidence.

This match, I have to say, was interesting.  I thought Gulbis had a chance to beat Fish because he had weapons and he had confidence.  His game is a bit erratic, but Canas appears to be doing well with getting Gulbis to believe in his game.

The two kept pretty even the first set, but a bad game on Gulbis’s part lead to a break and set for Fish.  Gulbis was able to turn things around and get a break and hold the break to win the second set.  In the third set, Gulbis got two breaks ahead, but as he was serving for the set, he played a bad game to give back one break, and in the second time, it appeared like Fish was about ready to break again, but then a key call went against Fish, and Gulbis was finally able to hold and win, 5-7, 6-4, 6-4.

He’ll pick up about 200 more points.  One thing that is hurting Gulbis is that his rank was high enough early in the year that all the Masters 1000 count.  Rui Machado, who was not ranked that highly at the start of the year, and who is only one spot behind Gulbis, can count all of his ATP 250 results because he’s not good enough to have this Masters 1000 results.  To be fair, he hasn’t played a lot of other tournaments that would have helped him out.

With this win, he’ll gain about 200 points.  The title was worth 250 points, but he’ll drop a 45 point result to make it count.  This will only put him around 50 in the world.  He’s not expected to play DC, and will need to qualify to get into Montreal and Cincinnati, or get a wildcard.

In Gstaad, Marcel Granollers upset Fernando Verdasco in three sets.  This was a match that would have helped Verdasco’s confidence which has been off for about a year.  Similarly, Marin Cilic, who has not played well since the Australian Open in 2010, would have felt better to win Umag, which is in his home country, but lost to talented Alexandr Dolgopolov in three sets.