So where exactly has this version of Gilles Simon been hiding? Yes, the French former Top Tenner has had injuries. Yes, he’s had a child. Yes, he intelligent, which doesn't help with anything. But I’ve never seen him move or anticipate or recover or hit or even compete the way he did against Roger Federer last night in Melbourne. As Federer said afterward, Simon “took it to” him for two sets, hitting bullet winners and running like a man possessed, and there wasn’t a whole lot Federer could do about it. Except, in his words, "get lucky."
Actually, in an unintended way, Federer was as least partly responsible for the situation he was in. The thing about making changes to your game is that you don’t know how it’s going to change the way your opponents play you back. Federer, since he’s been working with Paul Annacone, has become more aggressive around the edges. He’s coming over his backhand more, chipping and charging when he can, and going after his returns. All in all, there’s been more first-strike tennis coming from his side of the net in the last six months. And it’s worked. He's been virtually undefeated during that time.
Those were almost all two out of three set matches. If this had been another two of three, it would have been another blowout victory. But with one more set to work with, and nothing to lose, Simon began to feed off that Federer pace and throw it back, and past, him. Plexicushion is a surface neutral enough that it lets various players do their various things at the same time. Tonight it let Simon do his counter-punching thing. That involves two elements: Getting to hard-hit balls, and hitting it them well on the run. Simon came out of nowhere to catch up to numerous Federer shots that seemed to be winners; better, he got to them and belted them back with uncanny accuracy.
In the process, he also temporarily dismantled the new Federer architecture. When Federer chipped and charged, Simon hit a lob winner. When Federer ran around to a forehand return, Simon was there to redirect it into the open court. When Federer ripped the ball with topspin, it came back flatter and faster. When he came to the net, he watched the ball fly by him. When he couldn’t get the ball past Simon, whose recovery and anticipation were sensational, Federer began to rush and shank forehands. One Annacone-esque wrinkle that did work was the slightly off-pace slice serve out wide. It earned Federer two very big points in the final game, when Simon was on the verge of getting back into it. That serve was the only way to open up enough court so that the Frenchman couldn’t run the ball down on the next shot. And he still almost did.
Federer finally broke Simon’s serve in the fifth set by going to back to using his softer slice, and by mixing speeds and trajectories instead of attacking headlong. He was resourceful enough to know when to try something or different, or revert to something old. While Federer looked lost for much of the third and fourth sets, he was as determined as I’ve seen him in the fifth. He was even agitated with a pair of line judges—not the chair umpire—something I don’t think I’ve ever seen from him.
Federer is not a guy who can always psyche himself to victory; much of the time, if he doesn’t have it, he ends up making the match close but still losing. This time he did psyche, and think, himself into that fifth set break. He had to, because Simon didn’t give him anything. Federer may have had a scare and gone five and briefly lost his way, but I think that determination is going to remain. At the risk of sounding obvious—OK, just plain sounding obvious—he wants this one. One caveat: Will an increased amount of first-strike tennis be harder to maintain for three out of five sets?
So back to my original question: Where has this Gilles Simon been, and can we see some more of him? I watched him win in Sydney over the weekend, and I had the same good feeling about his game going forward. He’s an odd mix of the unpolished—his strokes are short and pretty rudimentary—and the stylish, with great feel for the ball (an American could never pull this combination off). He doesn’t run so much as move his feet in unison, staying low everywhere he goes. The winners he was hitting had an eye-popping quality. From a guy that slender, you know they’re all timing, which makes them that much more impressive. In some ways, Simon is, on a night like this, the guy everyone wants Andy Murray to be—a counterpuncher with punch. Simon typically doesn’t hit with the kind of pace he used tonight. Maybe it’s time that he does.
Best of all, he didn’t cave. Down 0-40 at 2-5, he came back to hold. Down 15-40 in the next game, he pushed it to deuce. Federer says he hopes he doesn’t have to see Simon again on a court anytime soon. We should be hope for the opposite.