The energy level was low inside Rod Laver Arena when Stan Wawrinka and Gael Monfils walked on court at 7:00 P.M. Friday night. The men aren’t used to this kind of thing. Tonight they did what the women usually have to do: Open the evening festivities before a quiet house that was slowly filling up with stone cold sober office workers. Unfortunately, these two produced their best tennis in the first set, which ended right around the time when the last stragglers were making their way to their seats.
Laver, or in Aussie Open know-it-all speak, RLA, has been cursed during the day sessions with the most lackluster line-up of matches I’ve ever seen in one arena. Clijsters and Nadal have allegedly played there, though I’ve seen exactly one point of Rafa’s, and Clijsters’ most memorable moment came when she called out on-court interviewer Todd Woodbridge for speculating that she was pregnant—we're obviously scrounging for entertainment in the big stadium. Yesterday, Xavier Malisse also allegedly played tennis there against Roger Federer. That didn't last long either, but who would have wanted it to continue?
The nights, on the other hand, have been dynamite. Hewitt-Nalbandian, Federer-Simon, even stretches of Baghdatis-Del Potro have all risen to the Grand Slam occasion. And it looked, for a brief time, that Wawrinka-Monfils was going to follow. Everyone I talked to was predicting a marathon, and it seemed they were going to be right. The rallies were long, and neither man hustles from one point to the next—they’re both inveterate ball-inspectors. (Did Rod Laver himself feel the need to look at all four balls before choosing the one with a millimeter’s less fuzz?)
Monfils went through a typical set of seemingly random strategic surprises. He tried baby slice backhands on one point. Then he went to high topspin forehands on the next. It was unclear how the two were connected. Meanwhile, Wawrinka kept hammering his heavy forehands and backhands—no frills needed. Whatever tactics Monfils tried, he couldn’t punch a hole in his opponent. While the set went to a tiebreaker, and the breaker was tight through eight points, I had never had the feeling that Wawrinka was going to lose it.
The bad little Swiss brother has been playing some ball of late. He had his first surge after hooking up with Good Brother’s former coach, Peter Lundgren, last year. Wawrinka registered a rare Grand Slam upset for him when he beat Andy Murray at Flushing, before losing a match he could have won in the quarters, to Mikhail Youzhny. This year Wawrinka has picked up on that form by winning in Chennai. While Monfils didn’t have his best stuff from the start, and he went even farther/further away after the first set, Wawrinka wasn’t going to be stopped. Lundgren has, like most coaches, urged his student to take it to his opponent. The idea suits Wawrinka. Not many guys have his weight of shot from both sides. He hit nearly 60 winners in three sets tonight against the very fleet Monfils (apparently he lost his "crasy game of fetch" this time). Wawrinka turned what had promised to be a struggle into a one-man clinic in baseline belting.
That sets up an intriguing match-up with Andy Roddick in the fourth round. Roddick won the only match they completed, in Davis Cup two years ago. But as Wawrinka pointed out in his post-match interview, the other two times they were scheduled to face off, Roddick had to default—I wasn’t sure whether Wawrinka was calling Roddick out, or saying he hopes it happens again (if he’s really going to go bad, wrestling-style, it should be the former). For his part, Roddick was quick to acknowledge Wawrinka’s win in Chennai, and that he’s been playing great tennis in general.
It took a little good fortune for Roddick to be in this position in the first place. He was outplayed from the baseline for the better part of two sets by the smooth, skinny Robin Haase of the Netherlands. Roddick, the experienced and pragmatic competitor, made it to a second-set tiebreaker on his usual diet of aces and grind-it-out baseline ball. He was waiting for the world’s No. 65 to come down to earth, and he got his wish just in time. At 2-3 in the tiebreaker, Haase double-faulted. At 2-5, he pulled a forehand wide. It may have been his worst error of a very clean match up to that point; but that’s when they tend to happen. Still, there were moments when Haase, who hits with an easy, watchable power, had Roddick bamboozled.
On Sunday we’ll see if Roddick’s bomb serve and baseline fortress can hold up against the Wawrinka ground-stroke onslaught. Before this fall, the pick would have been Roddick. In the long run, he's always been a reliable performer, while Wawrinka has had trouble with consistency. Plus, his forehand isn’t a terminating, Nadal-Federer-esque weapon. The upside for the Swiss is that it used to go off a lot more than it has been lately.
The fourth round is set to begin. A national holiday, Australia Day, is around the corner. Fireworks—rockets, missiles, bombs, even a Howizter or two—would be appropriate.