It’s always tough to summarize a match when all you see is a final score.  Yesterday, I caught some of the Tipsarevic-Davydenko semifinal in Moscow.  Alas, Davydenko is still struggling with control issues.  He lost the first set 6-2, but had game points to keep it to one break.  Yet, Tipsarevic broke anyway.  The story repeated itself.  At 5-4 up, Davydenko had 0-40 on Tipsarevic’s serve, but Tipsarevic clawed his way to win his serve, then got 0-40 on Davydenko’s serve and broke him.  But when all you see is 62, 75, you have no idea how that happened, what opportunities were missed.

Most people remember Janko Tipsarevic when he pushed Federer to a third round fifth setter at the 2008 Australian Open, one that Federer eked out 10-8 in the fifth.  Most people hoped he would move, say, into the top 20.  But Tipsarevic was mired in the 40s for a few years after that.  As the senior statesman of the Serbs (he was about 2 years older than the other Serbs).  But the Davis Cup magic that pushed Djokovic into the stratosphere also seemed to do the same for Tipsarevic.

After toiling to win his first tournament title (having lost in 4 finals prior), Tipsarevic broke through a few weeks ago in Kuala Lumpur.  And now in Moscow, Tipsarevic not only played his Davis Cup teammate, but the defending champ, Viktor Troicki.  Tipsy’s KL win pushed him past Troicki and made him the second ranked Serbian player.  And with that, he beat Troicki for the first time (to be fair, they only played once before), 64, 62.

Although Gael Monfils is a top ten player, has reached the semis of the French Open, and is generally a talented, athletic player, one of the most exciting in the game, he’s struggled with winning tournaments.  You would think the man has ten titles to his name, but he’s only had 3 titles, all of them pretty small titles of the ATP 250 variety.  Monfils has not won a title this year and he was hoping Stockholm would be his first.  Similarly, Jarkko Nieminen was hoping the third time was the charm at Stockholm, having reached the final 5 years ago, and 10 years ago.  While Monfils’s ranking and athleticism suggested he would get the win over the Finnish journeyman, his 11 losses in finals may have given Nieminen hope that nerves would best the Frenchman.

The talented Frenchman, however, finally got his first win of the year and beat Nieminen in 3 sets: 75, 36, 62

Next week, two ATP 250 events are played: Vienna and St. Petersburg.  The Lyon event (Open de Sud) was moved to late January.  One more week before both Federer and Djokovic return back to tour at Basel, Federer’s hometown tournament.  Djokovic appears to be training again, so that looks positive for a Basel return.