This was the first real match that I’ve seen Janowicz play.

My first mental note was: this guy hits a lot of drop shots for a big guy.  Janowicz stands at 6’8″ in the rare air of Isner, Karlovic, and Anderson.

I amended that note: this guy hits a lot of drop shots for anyone.

My next note was: this may be the best big man in tennis.

Before I gush on about this relatively unknown Polish player making something short of a miraculous run through the Paris draw, injecting a kind of excitement this tournament hasn’t seen in some time, I want to present a history lesson.

Back in the 1990s, women’s tennis was changing.  We have to go back to the 1980s to see the germ of this change.  Steffi Graf came out of nowhere, pounding balls, left and right.  No one had ever seen a player hit that hard.  It’s a testament to Chris Evert’s talent that she managed to stay moderately even against someone who hit the ball that hard.  It must have been like Jimmy Connors clubbing old-school Aussies in the early 1970s, or Lendl showing that you can, indeed, hit winners from the baseline.

It took a while for women’s tennis to deal with Graf’s power.  Girls growing up suddenly had to worry about hitting the ball really hard or be left in the dust playing the kind of tennis that Tracy Austin and Andrea Jaeger used to play.  Not everyone got the memo, then.

One consequence of the power game were taller women playing tennis.  Players like Mary Pierce, Lindsay Davenport, Jennifer Capriati, and eventually like Venus Williams, Maria Sharapova, and Li Na, were ushering in an era of hard hitting, tall women.  The height seemed to offset movement issues.  Mary Carillo termed this style of tennis “big-babe” tennis.  Indeed, China, in its search for the next great women’s talent, have zeroed in on this: tall women that can hit hard, thus, Li Na being a prototypical player in the Chinese mold.

Men’s tennis didn’t have the equivalent phenomenon until about 5 years ago, though the start of “big man” tennis dates back to the early 1990s with Todd Martin.  Martin was a rangy 6’6″, but despite being that height, Martin played a fair bit from the baseline, at least, early in his career.  If he had played tennis a decade or so earlier, he would have been told to play at net all the time.

Martin was at least smart enough to realize the game was becoming a baseline game, and had enough foot speed to play baseline.  Despite being the first good big man, there would be few like him for quite some time.

By the late 2000s, a bunch of tall players started making an impact, many of whom play today: John Isner, Sam Querrey, Marin Cilic, and perhaps the best of the bunch, Juan Martin del Potro.  There are others, like Kevin Anderson, and those just a hair shorter like the mostly missing Robin Soderling and Milos Raonic who stand around 6’5″.

Most of these tall players have one big shot: their serve, and one big liability, their movement.  If you’re going to play the ATP tour and your speed is a liability, you better make up for it in some other way.  That way is typically a big serve followed by a big forehand.  Querrey and Isner may not have started off with a big forehand, but they learned that if they’re going to win, they need a weapon that bothers opponents and not get caught up in long rallies where their movement might prove a liability.

“Big man” tennis tends to jettison too many extraneous shots.  It’s about winning the point efficiently, taking advantage of the power advantage a tall player has.

That’s why Jerzy Janowicz is a breath of fresh air.

Let’s consider, first, how improbable his journey has been.  At the start of the year, he was playing futures, the lowest rung of ATP play.  Shortly thereafter, he played Challengers, the minor leagues of tennis.  He had a successful Wimbledon, reaching the third round.  Even with a relatively promising Wimbledon, no one expected the Pole to make it to a finals.

First of all, how many Polish players can you name?  Here are two: Lukazs Kubot and Michael Przysiezny.  There are no Polish players in the top 50.  The women have fared better with the Radwanska sisters.  The men may not have had a top player since Wojtek Fibak, a workman-like player who may have been most famous for being one of Lendl’s earliest coaches.

Even if Janowicz has won two rounds, it could have been seen as a huge success.  He beat Philipp Kohlschreiber and Marin Cilic in the first two rounds.  Remember the last hard hitter to make a splash?  That was Lukas Rosol.  He knocked Nadal out of 2012, but more specifically, out of the second round of Wimbledon.  One had to wonder if that win was a flash in the pan, or whether he could go deep at Wimbledon.  Turns out, flash in the pan.  Rosol lost in the following round to, you guessed it, Philipp Kohlschreiber.

Cilic, who reached the semis of the 2010 Australian Open, went on to have a lackluster 2010 and 2011.  2012 showed some progress for Cilic.  Cilic won a weird Queen’s Club final when Argentine David Nalbandian was disqualified for kicking some wood that drew blood from a line judge.  He also won Umag.  He reached the quarterfinals of Cincy, the US Open, and Shanghai.

At the time, the Cilic loss was chalked up to poor play on Cilic’s part, a disappointing result after a pretty good year of tennis.

Then, the Pole played his toughest player, third ranked, Andy Murray.  Murray’s last tournament was Shanghai, a match where he had match point, but ultimately cramped and lost to a resilient Novak Djokovic.  Murray took the first set and was up a break in the second set, but lost the break, the tiebreak, and ultimately, the match.

At the time, many felt Murray was ready to exit the tournament.  Murray has never done that well at the year-end championship.  He’s reached the semifinals twice (in 2008 and 2010), and been eliminated in the round robins the other years.  And since it’s been hosted in London the last few years, the site of his first big breakthrough to a Slam (the Olympics as well as the Wimbledon final), he’s been keen on doing well this year, especially since an injury late in the season forced him to withdraw last year.

Despite this fact, Janowicz was practically in tears after this win.  At this point, every win must have achieved a huge goal.  Beating Kohlschreiber meant beating a top 20 player.  Beating Cilic meant beating a top 15 player.  Beating Murray meant beating a top 5 player.

In the following round, Janowicz played Janko Tipsarevic, a top ten player.  Tipsarevic was feeling the pressure to do well at Paris.  His position for the final 8 at London was the most tenuous.  He was only in because Nadal, who would been fourth, decided to shut down play in 2012.  That meant a good tournament would allow up to 8 players with a chance to leapfrog Tipsarevic and take the last spot, but none of those players were able to step up, and so when Tipsarevic beat Monaco and others (like Raonic) lost, then he was guaranteed that no one would snatch that last spot.

Tipsarevic won the first set against Janowicz, but then Janowicz went on a tear, hardly dropping a game, and Tipsarevic had to retire.  Again, the thought was that Janowicz was a bit lucky.  Either Tipsarevic didn’t care, or he did get injured.

Now, from the perspective of the Pole, he was playing great tennis, and his confidence was sky high.  Unlike Lukas Rosol, who fizzled in the round after his monumental upset of Nadal, Janowicz kept on going, and kept on winning.

Today, he played Gilles Simon who upset Tomas Berdych in the previous round.  Simon, for a French player, plays decidedly un-French.  The French are known for their flair, for favoring style and flash, over sensible play.  No one embodies that more than Gael Monfils, but even Richard Gasquet and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga are known as flashy players.  Not Simon.

Simon plays a relatively conservative style.  He uses his footspeed and endurance to outwit bigger opponents.  Against Mardy Fish, during the US Open, Simon played a bunch of shots up the middle, daring Fish to go for big shots.  Fish managed to keep his wits about him and beat Simon, but he was barely containing a mental implosion and was aided by Simon’s own inability to play clean tennis.

To beat Simon, you can either try to outlast him and move him around, something David Ferrer would try to do, or you can try to outhit him.  Berdych made way too many errors to do that, so he lost, but that’s Berdych’s approach to Simon.

And, unlike Tipsarevic and Murray, who were looking to London as their big goal, Gilles Simon knew he had no chances of qualifying for the year-end championship.

Indeed one thing all four semifinalists share in common is never having won a Masters 1000 tournament.  Simon had reached one back in 2008 when Madrid was still an indoor tournament, but lost to Andy Murray.  Michael Llodra had never reached a Masters 1000 final.  And despite David Ferrer having been top 5 for a few years, he only reached his first Master 1000 final in 2010, losing to Nadal in Rome.  He reached the finals of Monte Carlo in 2011 and also lost to Nadal, and reached the finals of Shanghai in 2011 and lost to Andy Murray.

Janowicz hadn’t even been in a final of an ATP tour level tournament, let alone a Masters 1000 tournament.

Janowicz doesn’t play the typical big man tennis.  First, he loves the drop shot.  Perhaps a little too much.  But he can hit the drop shot off both sides, and for my money, may be one of the best drop shotter in the business.  He has an incredible variety of places he can hit the drop shot.

The drop shot really threw off Simon who probably expected someone of Janowicz’s size to prefer hitting with power.  Janowicz certainly has power and variety off his forehand, but he mixes it up better than any big man, and he moves well.  It was hard to tell that he was the tall player.  His footwork was quite good.  And, he wasn’t always content to hit power.  He’d throw in a slice backhand to change the pace, but was willing to move the ball around with inside-in, inside-out forehands.

Janowicz was able to be in a lot of Simon’s games, and was able to break once in the first set, and then played a very aggressive game late in the second set, to break.  Like a good big man, he was winning a few free points every time he served.  Simon struggled a bit with the return.  Janowicz stands a bit wide of the center mark a la Andre Agassi, and uses it to produce angles.  One odd habit: although Janowicz doesn’t grunt on groundstrokes, he does on his serve.

And, in the final, Janowicz will play the one guy who didn’t get the memo about losing early.  Ferrer, to his great credit, seems to play every tournament to win.  It doesn’t hurt that, unlike his fellow Spaniard, Juan Carlos Ferrero, that Ferrer is something of a bull when it comes to health.  He seems to play consistently well no matter how much he plays.  To be fair, Ferrer has never won a Master 1000, and despite having been in a World Tour Final final, this title might mean more to Ferrer.

Ferrer had to play the tricky Michael Llodra who is a throwback to the serve-and-volleyers of the 1990s.  Llodra even has classic weaknesses: he’s not that good from the baseline.  Indeed, a few years ago, Andy Roddick realized the way you beat Llodra is to come to net and force him to pass you.  In an era where the top 30 players are excellent passers, it’s a little shocking that Llodra struggles with the pass.

Even so, Llodra kept attacking Ferrer and gave himself chance after chance to break, but for every successful foray to the net, Llodra seemed to leave shots in bad spots and allowed Ferrer to move the ball to parts of the court Llodra couldn’t reach.  Llodra only converted 1 of 11 break points, and had so many chances to break, but couldn’t.

So that puts Ferrer to the final, and despite Janowicz’s stellar play, Ferrer has to be favored.  Janowicz clearly has the confidence and variety to keep it interesting, so he might have an outside shot, but Ferrer is so dogged in the way he plays, and makes you work hard for every point.  He beats tiny players like Tipsarevic.  He beats big players like del Potro.  He beats players that are ranked below him, and that’s pretty impressive given his size.

Still, one wonders if we’re not seeing the birth of tennis’s next big superstar.