Let’s start with the first semi of the day.  Feliciano Lopez played David Ferrer.  Despite Ferrer being the third seed and ranked number 5, Lopez lead their head-to-head on hardcourts 6-1.  To be fair, the two hadn’t met on hardcourts since 2009.  This is an important observation because David Ferrer, despite having been a very good player for a while, has reached this high level only since 2010.  Ferrer has reached the year-end championship before (losing to Federer) so he shows affinity for the surface.  Even so, Ferrer has stepped up his mental toughness in the last two years.

To be fair, Lopez has also had a decent year.  This year, he reached the quarterfinals of Wimbledon defeating Andy Roddick.  Due to his yperformance leading up to Wimbledon, he was asked to play Davis Cup against the US in Austin this year.  Without Rafael Nadal, the choice was between Fernando Verdasco, who had played inconsistent ball since the 2010 French Open, or Feliciano, who had the hot hand.  Almagro would be a good choice too, but he’s never fared so well on a faster surface.  Albert Costa, the Spanish Davis Cup captain, was rewarded with two wins by Lopez

However, Lopez had a so-so summer.  He played three summer events after Wimbledon, one a challenger on clay in Colombia (which he won), but lost early in the other two events.  He lost early in Montreal to Mardy Fish and early to Kohlschreiber in Cincy.  He lost to Andy Murray in the third round of the US Open after being pushed to five sets by Vasel Pospisil of Canada, an up-and-coming Canadian player in 5 sets.  In Beijing, last week, the first event Lopez had played since the US Open, he lost in the second round to Youzhny.   The point is Lopez hadn’t played that well to reach Shanghai.

Even so, Lopez worked his way through close matches to get to this point.  He beat Janko Tipsarevic, who won Kuala Lumpur two weeks ago in two close tiebreaks, in the opening round.  Then, he beat Bogomolov in 3 sets.  He hit his stride against Berdych in the third round beating him in straight sets.  Then, he figured out Florian Mayer beating him rather handily in straight sets, and that lead him to the semis.

Although Ferrer is ranked fifth, he didn’t exactly have a cakewalk to the finals.  Ferrer had a bye in the first round and played Raonic, the big serving Canadian, in the second round, edging him in two close sets.  Raonic had a set point in the second set tiebreak, but couldn’t close it out against the tenacious Spaniard.  Ferrer appeared to be down and out to compatriot, Juan Carlos Ferrero, as he struggled to control his forehand.  Ferrero ran off to an easy 6-2 first set.  The two played even in the second set until Ferrero twisted an ankle.  Although it was even, Ferrero eventually had double-break point to win the match.  Ferrer, amazingly, hit two huge serves and then fended off one more match point to hold, and then he broke Ferrero to win the second set.

By that point, Ferrer’s confidence had grown and Ferrero’s play wasn’t nearly as good.  Ferrer ran off with the third set, 6-2, to escape from that predicament.  This set up a match between Ferrer and Roddick.

Surprinsigly, Ferrer leads Roddick in hardcourt wins showing that he can play on the hard stuff.  The two played pretty even in the first set with Ferrer appearing to hold serve a bit more easily.  Ferrer even got a mini-break in the first set tiebreak, but Roddick took two mini-breaks back on Ferrer errors and served out the set.  But Ferrer was starting to pick up on the Roddick serve.  He breezed to an easy 6-2 second set.  The two had to fend off break points in the third set, but both held until the tiebreak, which Ferrer won easily.

The script for the Ferrer-Lopez match was somewhat like the Ferrer-Roddick quarterfinal.  In particular, Ferrer had a tough time figuring out Lopez’s serve in the first set.  Lopez is a bit of a throwback player, an oddity among the Spaniards.  He is a lefty, with a rangy body that allows him to serve big.  But much like Emilio Sanchez, Lopez relies a lot on his slice backhand.  These days, the slice can be a huge liability.  Most players can attack the slice without a problem where in the past, it befuddled players who found it harder to handle because they had do get a low ball up and over and down.

Practically speaking, this means players can often attack the Lopez backhand.  Lopez, when he relies on the slice, is then in full retrieval mode.  Fortunately, he has pretty long limbs and gets to lots of balls.  This was enough to rattle Florian Mayer in their quarterfinal match.  This isn’t to say Lopez can’t hit topspin off the backhand, but that he’s far more confident with the slice.  Really, though, the reason Lopez wins his matches is his huge serve which he’s willing to come to net to win the point.  He’s a bit like Michael Llodra (both are about the same age) who needs to get to net to cover up their backhand as a liability.  They both play an old school style.

David Ferrer’s strategy was pretty simple.  Attack the Lopez backhand, move Lopez around, and keep him on the defense.  For a while, however, he struggled against the Lopez serve.  Lopez held throughout the first set and then won the tiebreak much like Roddick.  But, much like the Roddick match, Ferrer began to read the Lopez serve and dictate play.  Lopez was finding it harder to string points together.  Ferrer secured two breaks in the second set and then one break in the third set to get his second win over Lopez on a hardcourt.

Final score: 6-7, 6-3, 6-3

The other semifinal looked like it would be a comfortable win for Andy Murray.  Because Murray is a top seed, he had a bye in the first round. Dmitry Tursunov, who reached the Kuala Lumpur final two weeks ago, was his second round opponent, but he dropped out citing a wrist injury.  His third round opponent was Stan Wawrinka.  The last time they met was in the third round of the US Open where he upset Murray.  The two have been frequent hitting partners.

Wawrinka is more of a clay court player.  He’s had an up-and-down 2011.  Since Wimbledon, he’s only had one good tournament and hat was Montreal where he lost to compatriot, Roger Federer, in the quarters.  He lost early in the US Open to Donald Young in five sets.  That was a match that he was up a break in the fifth and probably should have won.  Wawrinka has only played Davis Cup since the US Open winning a critical fifth rubber against Lleyton Hewitt on grass in a fifth set that ran over 2 days.  Shanghai is his first tournament back so it was probably expected to be a bit tough.

Even so, it was a patchy match against Murray who seemed to resort to his passive style of play.  Murray had multiple breaks in the first and third set so he was never in too much danger, but he gave up breaks in both sets, including a 5-0 lead in the third set which he eventually won 6-3.

One could attribute that to Murray getting used to the Shanghai ball and court surface.  In the following round, Murray played Matthew Ebden.  Ebden had upset Simon the previous round in a match relegated to a side indoors court with no audience.  Edben won it in a squeaker in a third set.  Ebden decided to play relatively lengthy rallies and come to net when he could.  Murray was content trading long rallies with Edben and wasn’t as prepared to go for big shots.

I believe Murray is working on a dual prong strategy.  Murray knows that Djokovic wins his matches mostly be outlasting his opponent.  He becomes a brick wall and if you attack Djokovic, he can whip a winner by you.  But if you try to play slow ball with Djokovic, he’ll find an opening and hit a down-the-line winner.  Murray needs to build good patient offensive ball like Djokovic, but be able to hit first strike tennis as well.  Without this blend, he’ll create too many errors when he’s too aggressive.  To this end, Murray wants to close out certain points by hitting a good hard hook angle crosscourt.

This angle is kind of the opposite of what Federer likes to do.  Federer’s classic putaway shot is his inside out forehand.  It’s hit quite close to the right sideline and maybe 2 meters inside the baseline.  It creates just enough angle to be mostly impossible to reach, but is deep enough that he can take a good whack at it.  Murray wants to develop the winner in the other direction using a standard crosscourt forehand to roughly the same spot at the other sideline.  From Murray’s perspective, he wants to hit close to the left sideline and maybe 2 meters from the baseline.  Murray’s always preferred the crosscourt on both sides.

Murray’s opponent in the semis was Kei Nishikori who should end up around 30 in the world once the rankings come out on Monday.  There had been a project 45 which was to reach the rank of 45, the highest rank for a male Japanese player, second only to Shuzo Matsuoka, the best male Japanese player in the modern pro era.  By reaching the quarterfinals, Nishikori finally accomplished this goal.

The Chinese fans have supported Nishikori.  There is a peculiar dynamic there.  On the one hand, some Chinese remember the war atrocities of the Japanese back in the 1940s.  On the other hand, that was 70 years ago.  They see Nishikori as an Asian player.  One needs to understand that the Chinese love to characterize people.  They’ve long seen the western player as bigger and stronger than the Chinese especially the men and that this difference has hurt them in sports (though they do fantastically well at the Olympics).  So when a player like Nishikori does well, the Chinese are thrilled because they believe the can do well.  This, despite the fact that China has over a billion people, and somewhere among the masses, there must be a talented tennis player.  Still, tennis requires a huge amount of skill compared to, say, basketball.

Nishikori is very good at generating angles which makes him tough to play.  Ebden, for example, plays a more conventional rally ball.  Nishikori can hook angles on both his forehand and backhand.  This ability makes Nishikori a bit challenging to play.  If he can get consistency with his angles, he puts his opponent on the defense right away.

Because this was the first time Murray had played Nishikori, the strategy seemed to startle Murray at first.  Murray was willing to rally early on, but Nishikori probably knew that his best chances was to strike first.  So Nishikori had Murray on the run right away.

Now today’s players are far more savvy than players from even ten years ago.  I could imagine John McEnroe playing an opponent he had never seen or played before, but that his belief in his own game was enough to pull him through.  And many of McEnroe’s opponents probably didn’t truly scout McEnroe because access to video was extremely limited.

These days, players have access to all sort of video.  The Internet means they can quickly look up information about opponents.  They can scout them remotely.  For example, Andy Murray probably knows a lot more about Matthew Ebden than the average tennis fan who has never heard of him.  He has probably scouted more than a dozen players that he’s never played and has built a database of how he might play them.  Even as recently as about ten years ago, Federer was playing Mario Ancic of Croatia in the first round of Wimbledon.  He had been told Ancic was a baseline, so when this guy came charging to net, the 7th seed was surprised and lost in straight sets.

Most pros understand such mistakes lead to undesired losses.  With today’s technology, Murray can keep extensive information about the players he plays, and many other players do the same.

Murray’s big advantage over Nishikori would be his serve.  Murray’s opted to play a peculiar serving strategy.  Everyone criticizes Murray for having a low first serve percentage.  However, Murray’s idea is this.  Win 80% or more of the first serve and you get lots of cheap points.  It’s not worth getting a higher percentage in if his opponents can routinely get them back in play.  At that point, the first serve doesn’t buy you nearly as much.  This would be a bigger problem if Murray didn’t win a good percentage on his second serves, but hardly any player truly attacks the second serve any more.  Rarely do you see a player going for a winner on a return.  In the women’s game, yes, but not as much in the men’s game.

And once Murray realized that Nishikori was moving the ball around, he started upping his level of aggression off the ground too.  This is useful to Murray anyway because he’ll want to play aggressive ball against Ferrer in the final just as he did in Tokyo.  So, the combination of good serving, being more aggressive off the ground, and then being patient with Nishikori lead to easy holds for Murray.

By the second service game, Murray was starting to stay in points with Nishikori, and broke him twice to take the first set, 6-3.  Although Nishikori played good points here and there, he seemed to feel pressure to hit balls well all the time, and that lead to a lot of errors.  Worse still, he never got to break point on Murray’s serve and lost all 3 of his serves in the second set to go down, 6-0.  Murray won the match in an hour.

That leads to tomorrow’s match.  Murray is aiming to win three tournaments in a row for the first time in his career.  He’s only ever won two tournaments in a row once, back in 2008 when he won Madrid (then an indoors tournament) and St. Petersburg.

Murray is going to be favored again to beat Ferrer.  Murray has never lost to Ferrer on hardcourts in four tries.  Murray will attempt to do the same thing to Ferrer (one assumes) as he did in Tokyo.  Ferrer is tough if he can start to set up points the way he likes, that is, with his forehand.  Murray is likely to up the pace of his groundstrokes and try to rob Ferrer of time.  Last week, Murray broke Ferrer twice in each of two sets in a straight set win.  He doesn’t want Ferrer to get in his usual patterns.

In the past, Murray would play like Ferrer because he wasn’t willing to be nearly as aggressive.  This would lead to longer matches.  One benefit of a stronger attack is quicker matches, and Murray may begin to see the benefit of finishing quickly.  Murray’s also working on hitting winners on the return of serve which are basically “return aces”.  He does this more than any player now, but it’s a new wrinkle to his game.  Ferrer’s best chance is to hope Murray is off his game.  Ferrer hasn’t been playing his best tennis, but he is a scrapper so he’s been finding ways to win.

Tomorrow’s final will be played at 4:30 PM in China or whenever the previous doubles finals finishes (with the modern rules for doubles which guarantees two sets and a ten point champions tiebreak, the finish time is usually far more predictable and completes under 2 hours).