Indian Wells 2

Milos Raonic

The first match I headed for when the venue opened on Friday was Milos Raonic.  At 11 o’clock it was already 90 degrees and apparently the word was out about him because Stadium 2, which is not small, filled up quickly.  Raonic, up against a Turkish player named Marsel Ilhan, was impressive in the smooth fluidity of his all-court game.  Despite being only 20, he has all the shots and puts them together with grace.  He dismissed Ilhan in 2 quick sets so I popped over to Stadium 3 to watch a bit of Ryan Harrison, an 18-year-old American who’s been talked up, but who is currently ranked 152 and lost in the first round of the Australian Open.  He did a good job of putting away the Frenchman Jeremy Chardy (ranked 49), holding his nerve even after losing the 1^st set tiebreak.  (He went on to beat Garcia-Lopez in the next round and then upset Raonic to earn the chance to face Federer, whom he took to a tiebreak in the 1^st set before losing, so it was something of a breakout tournament for him.) 

Ryan Harrison

Later that afternoon, after a breeze had come up and the temperature had dropped into the low 80s, I went over to Court 7 to see Bernard Tomic.  There were only a few people there so I was able to sprawl out, stretch my legs over the seats in front and lean back against the seat behind, and have plenty of elbow room.  Unfortunately, given how comfortable I was, Tomic looked tired and bored, as if he didn’t really care much whether he won or not.  All the same, he was able to deliver enough points to win in 3 sets.  But his game struck me as more one-dimensional than I’d thought, he was just banging the ball from the backcourt without much finesse or point construction, and I lost some of my interest in him. 

After a trip to the car to grab something to eat, I headed for Court 4 where a women’s doubles match (Benesova/Zahlavova vs. Sanchez/Garrigues) was just finishing up.  I snagged an excellent seat right on the court for the following match with the team of Victoria Azarenka (Belarus) and the foxy Maria Kirilenko (Russia) against another pair of Spaniards (Llagostera Vives and Parra Santonja).  It was cooling off rapidly by this time and even though I pulled a long-sleeved tee over my tee-shirt, and a sweatshirt over that, I was still a little chilly due to a brisk wind that had come up.  But as the match went on the wind slacked off and I slowly got more comfortable, and in the end the contest turned out to be a thriller, going down to 11-9 in a super-tiebreak. 



Maria Kirilenko

 

After the women, Alex Dolgopolov, slighter of build and more slender than he appeared on TV, and Xavier Malisse came on to play doubles against Tomas Berdych and Janko Tipsarevic.   Dolgopolov and Malisse were in high spirits, laughing and joking even when they appeared to be losing.  They seemed to find everything amusing.  Their opponents, on the other hand, were sullen and grumpy.  Tipsarevic got caught reaching over the net and hitting a ball on his opponents’ side, which cost him the point, and this put him in an even darker mood, the more so when he saw how amused Malisse and Dolgopolov were by it.  A little later, Malisse sliced a drop shot so wickedly that, before Tipsarevic could get to it, it bounced back over the net to his own side, something I’d never seen happen before.  He slapped his leg and chuckled with delight.  Like the women’s match before it, this went to a super-tiebreak that was pulled out by Dolgopolov/Malisse, 10-8, their relaxed good humor winning the day against the sourpuss Serb and his cranky Czech partner.  (In subsequent rounds Malisse/Dolgopolov took out both the Bryans and the Murrays, not to mention Bopanna/Quereshi, and, lo and behold, went on to win the doubles championship.)  When I left the venue it was 11 PM.  I’d been watching tennis for 12 hours.  It was the best day of the trip. 



Alex Dolgopolov

 On Saturday I started off at Stadium 3 watching Marcos Baghdatis play an Indian named Somdev Devvarman.  I’d heard of Devvarman for unexpectedly beating Tipsarevic in Davis Cup.  It was the only match India won against Serbia (which in the last few years has become a tennis power).  Nevertheless I was unprepared for the drubbing he gave Baghdatis.  Baghdatis, who is usually an energetic, happy guy, was dragging glumly around the court looking like he was sick, utterly lacking his usual pep. 

The following match in that stadium was Ivo Karlovic from Croatia, the current holder of the record for the fastest serve at 156 mph (topping Roddick’s 155), against the #6 player in the world and one of the best returners, David Ferrer.  6’10” Karlovic played extraordinarily well, firing off serves in the high 130s routinely and coming to the net to finish off the point when necessary.  He upset Ferrer in straight sets. 



Donald Young

 
From there I moved over to court 5 to see “The Dog,” Dolgopolov, play singles against the Rumanian Victor Hanescu, a journeyman opponent he handled in straight sets.  Dolgopolov has a fast, quirky game that is fun to watch, but he lacks experience and still needs to learn how to beat the big boys.  (He fell in the next round to Del Potro.)  While watching him I could hear the match behind me in Stadium 2 between #5 Andy Murray and Donald Young being called.  Donald Young is an American player who was spoken of as promising years ago.  He was the #1 junior in 2005, but so far hasn’t been able to translate that success to the pro circuit.  He was ranked 143, so my expectation was that Murray would crush him.  Imagine my surprise when he won the first set in a tiebreak.  But that was nothing to the astonishment I felt when he went on to win the second set and the match, and the stadium crowd erupted: then I was really flabbergasted.  Of all the upsets in the tournament (and there were many) this one and Ryan Harrison’s victory over Raonic were the most gratifying, because they offer some (slim, because it now appears Young’s victory probably had more to do with Murray’s post-Australian slump than with Young finally finding his game) hope for the future of American tennis, at least on the men’s side.  The women’s side remains bleak. 

Xavier Malisse

Afterward I went over to Stadium 2 and caught the end of the Querrey/Tipsarevic match, which went to the American Querrey in straight sets.  Following them, in the same stadium, were Malisse (ranked 52) and Tsonga (seeded #15), and I’d long wanted to see Tsonga live.  Nevertheless, I tend to root for the underdog, and that was Malisse in this case (Malisse, who is 30 now, has failed to live up to the early promise of his talent).  To my surprise and delight, Malisse, although he was not the happy-go-lucky guy he had been when playing doubles with The Dog, still played well and came out on top.  (He was beaten by Devvarman in the next round.)

Sunday I started at Stadium 3 to see the Frenchman Richard Gasquet play Pablo Cuevas from Uruguay.  Gasquet has a beautiful all-court game and one of the best one-handed backhands you’ll ever see.  Like Malisse, he’s been an underachiever in his career but he’s still a joy to watch.  He had no trouble with Cuevas.  (Later in the tournament he beat Roddick, but lost to the eventual winner Djokovic in the quarters.)  After him the Serbian former #1 Ana Ivanovic came on.  She started strong, faltered with a string of double faults, but then recovered to take it in 2.  Actually I left when the score was 3-0 in the second to go watch the Bryan twins who were practicing in the next court over.  Then I went to Court 8 to watch Schiavone/Stosur take on Azarenka/Kirilenko.  I’d enjoyed the previous Azarenka/Kirilenko doubles match so much that I wanted more, and, even though the seat I found at the end of the court wasn’t nearly as good as the one I’d had for their previous match, I wasn’t disappointed by the quality as this bout also went to 11-9 in a super-tiebreak.  (Unfortunately Azarenka was injured in singles with the #1 seed Wozniacki, so she couldn’t play their semi-final doubles match.)  When it was over I wandered over to Court 4, where Yen-Hsun Lu from Taipei (who beat Roddick at Wimbledon last year) was taking on Ernests Gulbis from Latvia.  I got a great seat, right on the court, but the match was kind of lifeless.  Gulbis was firing forehands like bullets, as usual, but a lot of them were missing.  After the first set I decided the match lacked excitement (maybe I was just getting tennised-out at that point) and that I would abandon my great seat and get an early start on the drive back to the airport in Ontario. 

Richard Gasquet

So the highlights for me were the 2 doubles matches on Friday night for which I had a perfect seat and both of which were exciting cliffhangers, and then late on Saturday afternoon the Malisse/Tsonga contest.  The Raonic/Ilhan, Gasquet/Cuevas and Karlovic/Ferrer matches gave me the chance to see some good play on one side of the net, but only the last was somewhat competitive, and it was hard to fully enjoy them because they were all played during the most intense heat of the day and I felt like I was being barbecued.  But around 2:30, 3 o’clock each day a bit of a breeze came up and that made sitting in the hot sun more bearable, so that later matches were more enjoyable. 

Djokovic ended up winning the tournament, beating Federer for the third time in a row in the semis, and Nadal in the final.  That made him 18-0 on the year.  It looks like there’s a new sheriff in town.