by Pete Bodo
NEW YORK—What kind of a man does it take to receive a kick second serve at ad-in (after multiple deuces) from the No. 12 player in the world and No. 10 seed at this U.S. Open and return it with a drop shot, the way Alexandr Dolgopolov did while facing David Ferrer here today?
Well, a brave one. Or maybe an incredibly gifted one. Or someone who's just plain dumb.
Then again, maybe it takes a guy who's feeling so ill he knows he can't string together more than two or three shots without feeling dizzy and incapacitated—a guy who's had a rare blood disorder from birth, one which is sometimes activated when he crosses a string of time zones and usually winds up forcing him to take intravenous medication and pills, and demands a severe change of diet (eliminating fried foods, salt and gassy beverages, among other things) coupled with a few weeks of utter rest.
I have to admit, I was having fun with all of the obvious options while watching Dolgolopov at work on Court 7 against Ferrer, and the truth, when I learned it, was—and I don't mean to be callous—a buzz-kill. But let me tell the story from the start.
Dolgopolov is a 21-year-old from Kiev, in the Ukraine. His father, Oleksandar, is a former ATP-grade player from back in the days of the USSR. He had scant opportunity to travel outside Russia and thus retired at around the age of 24, shortly after the son named after him was born (the younger Dolgopolov has since officially changed his first name to Alexandr, having grown irritrated by people who insisted on calling him "Olek"). The elder Dolgopolov became a coach and helped develop the former Top 5 ATP pro and French Open runner-up Andrei Medvedev. At the age of 3, his son was swinging racquets and rollling balls while his father trained Medvedev, and one thing led to another.
I've been hearing a lot of good things about Dolgolopov, often with a liberal use of words like "amazing," or "unbelievable," or "insane." He's up to No. 45 now, and so far this year he's beaten a pile of good players, including Mikhail Youzhny, Fernando Gonzalez and Alberto Montanes. He was a semifinalist at Queens Club, and at Wimbledon he lost to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the second round, 10-8 in the fifth. Dolgo played Ferrer a few weeks ago in Cincinnati, losing 6-4 in the third.
So I made a point of catching his re-match with Ferrer in the company of Eban Harrell, a buddy who works for Time magazine, here from London on a busman's holiday. Court 7 was sparsely populated when we flopped down onto the hot aluminum bench shortly before the match started. Dolgopolov was dressed in a regal purple jersey with short white sleeves, and sporting a hairdo that a WTA pro might envy: a subtle headband swept back his long hair, which was collected in the back in a pony tail, above which was a separate, substantial bun.
Dolgo has a light, confident tread; he walks with his chest flung out, bathed in what appears to be an air of entitlement. In fact, with his sharp, feminine features and hair-do, he rather resembled a Medici, or one of those other Renaissance personages vain enough to commission a portrait by a Da Vinci or Michaelangelo.
The impression was probably heightened by the manner of his opponent. Ferrer, dressed in conventional tennis whites with red trim, has a purposeful walk. He keeps his head down and his back is slightly hunched. This is a guy who's on his way to do something, although it's hard to imagine it being anything important. Honey, would you go down to the store to pick up a quart of milk?
Dolgopolov opened the ball with a quick hold, and you don't know "quick" until you watch this kid. His service motion is ultra-fast. It begins with an odd, subtle flinch and knee bend and he immediately flings himself into the shot, feet simultaneously leaving the ground. Blink and you miss it all.
On his groundstrokes, Dolgo generates incredible racquet-head speed, and still finds time to adjust in myriad ways to the flight of the ball; it's as if he's loathe to allow the stick to travel the same path twice. Guys as nimble as him rarely have such a varied repertoire. Ferrer, for example, is so fleet that his legs do most of the critical work. He has solid, reliable strokes, but they're pro forma. Dolgo is unpredictable and explosive in a way that Ferrer is not, and nobody—but nobody—is so precariously perched on the cusp of abandon when he unloads.
By around the fifth game, it was also obvious that Dolgopolov is also shockingly careless. He'd paint the line with one atomic forehand, then drill the next one into the fence. He appeared to have no plan beyond hitting the crap out of the ball. Not that this wasn't entertaining. Au contraire. We happened to be sitting near a gaggle of Desperate Tennis Housewives from New Jersey, and after Dolgo hit a screaming forehand winner from 10-feet behind the baseline, one of them simply cried out, "Good God!"
Ferrer, softly hissing 'mos, 'mos, after each winner, broke Dolgo twice from 2-2 to win the first set, with plenty of help from the opponent. By that time I was already toying around with headlines: Entitled, but Clueless? The Contortionist? In the second set, I kept track of how many rally strokes (points following the serve and return) were played in each point. I had a grand total of four by the time the score climbed to 30-40 (fewer than one stroke per point), although the five-stroke exchange that yielded the break for Ferrer ruined the percentage.
Of course, any time you can keep Ferrer from turning a match into a rallying contest you're onto something, even if it isn't always good. Dolgo's exuberant, let-it-roll strategy is highly appealing when it's matched against the steady Ferrer, who plays with all the joy of a graverobber. Refusing to submit to baseline torture of the kind Ferrer likes to inflict is a somewhat principled stand, and if it's executed at a sufficiently high level, it can bend a guy like Ferrer, who's obsessed with consistency and rhythm, right out of shape. But Dolgo was simply too erratic. At one point late in the second set, Eban turned, a puzzled look on his face, and said: "This is stupid."
And it only got worse, but for one last glimmer of genius from Dolgopolov. At one point late in the third set, he hit a drop shot. Ferrer, scrambling forward, dug the ball out and lobbed over Dolgo's backhand side, causing him to leap as if to hit a backhand overhead. But at the very last moment, he flattened the face of the racket and, still airborn, lightly flicked a lob of his own over Ferrer's head for a clean winner.
