Playing tennis in the air. That’s what it can look like when Alexandr Dolgopolov has it all going, as he did for most of his upset win over No. 4 seed Robin Soderling today. We like to say that certain players have “all the shots,” but Dolgopolov has them all and a few of his own invention. There’s the head high crosscourt backhand that he seems to take directly in front of his body. There’s the whip forehand he hits while hopping in the air. There’s the slice backhand that’s spiced with a little extra sidespin. Plus, there's the usual array of threaded passing shots, sharp returns to the corners, and easy forehand winners. If Lleyton Hewitt had studied ballet—a comical thought if there ever was one—he might have moved and played something like Dolgopolov.
The Ukrainian is the last, and thus far the best, member of the ATP’s Aussie Open youth movement. Dimitrov, Berankis, and Tomic have come and gone. Raonic is playing as I write this. Meanwhile, Dolgopolov, at 22 the elder statesman among these whippersnappers, is through to the quarterfinals. Just when it looked like the top seeds had rendered themselves unbeatable, one of them, Robin Soderling, has been beaten, convincingly. Dolgopolov nicked and sliced and cut and hooked the No. 4 seed until the towering giant finally toppled over.
We’ve been hearing a lot about Dolgopolov’s youth at this event. His father worked as fellow Ukrainian Andrei Medvedev’s coach, and he toted little Oleksandr (he recently Westernized his name) around the world with him. In his post-match interview today, Jim Courier said he had hit with Dolgopolov when he was very little. The kid never missed, Courier said, which was “very annoying.” In his press conference, Dolgopolov said with a smile that his father had coached him until he was 19, at which point they “got tired of each other.” Now he works with Aussie coach Jack Reeder, and he’s been training Down Under since the first week in December.
I’ve mentioned it here before, but I also remember watching Dolgopolov when he was a junior. I was doing a story on Donald Young in 2005 or 2006, so I went to the Orange Bowl and watched the various junior Slam events that year. In those days, Dolgopolov was one of the smaller kids, with a thatch of hair that fell over his forehead. He was all touch, all funk and junk and spin, with the thought process of a Baby Santoro—in other words, more catnip for tennis writers. The problem was, he didn’t seem to enjoy tennis. Half the matches I watched, he appeared to tank, including one horrible performance at junior Wimbledon, in which he seemed to be losing to spite himself, or to spite someone else. I can remember thinking that having enough talent that you didn’t need to work at the game was more curse than blessing. I couldn’t imagine ever seeing the kid at the pro level.
Now he’s backed up that native talent and creativity with the pro fundamentals. He can put the ball away from both sides and defend the baseline. Dolgopolov says it was a matter of organization more than anything else. “He’s done a lot for my physical and mental [game],” Dolgopolov says of Reeder. “I’ve got a lot more solid and consistent. He gave me the right way to play, got my game together.” Leave it to an Aussie to show a kid the right way to play tennis; it’s in the blood down here. Dolgopolov has also cut out one of his (less than pernicious) distractions from tennis, computer programming. He and a friend created an “office game” where you can have “fights.” Now Dolgopolov says he’s “not into it,” and that he mostly likes to just drive his car around. Understandable: It is a Subaru.
For the moment, we’ll have to make do with Dolgopolov’s creativity on a tennis court. That should be plenty. He’s got the athletic genes that are standard now: His father was a tennis player and his mother a gymnast. It makes for a graceful combination. I’m on the Dolgopolov bandwagon again, the way I was back in ’05. Of the young guys I’ve seen here, he’s been the most enjoyable to watch. His five-setter with Soderling today was never a chore to sit through.
The loose and versatile Dolgopolov made it seem, as they say, so easy. His shots, with their occult spins, curved around and away from Soderling, who was constantly one step out of position (“I didn’t play good enough to win,” was the Sod’s simple but accurate assessment afterward). It’s good to know that a kid with the talent to make it look easy ended up working hard enough to get the most out of that potential. Now he'll play another player of similar talent who has worked hard to exploit it, Andy Murray, in the quarters. It should be a pleasure to watch them craft each other into the ground. Though judging by Murray's current form, it will be a tough one to win.
Whatever happens, it's good to see a new face in the big press room, one of a few who have made their debuts there this week. Today Dolgopolov sat in the interview room looking up, a half-smile of amazement on his face as reporters kept filing in. With a young player, it’s a getting to know you process. Journalists cast about for any scrap of information, from what car he drives to the type of computer game he designed to his mother’s whereabouts (she does “nothing much” according to Dolgopolov; I hope that quote doesn’t get back to mom).
In this casting about, we got a memorable quote from him. Someone noted that he's Ukrainian, but he has an Italian manager and an Aussie coach. How did that come about?
“There’s a lot of nice people in the world, so you just meet them all over,” was the answer.
That has nothing to do with tennis or the appealing way that Alexandr Dolgopolov plays it. But’s it’s a nice thought to finish on, nonetheless. I hope the world, and the world of tennis, continues to seem so nice to him.