Our reporter at Queen’s Club follows the fans in London.
LONDON—People watching is a great pastime at any tournament, Queen’s included. Throngs camp out in the parking lot, hoping to catch a glimpse of Rafael Nadal, Andy Roddick or any tennis personality, really. One fan was delighted to get a picture with Mark Petchey, Andy Murray’s former coach who’s now a television analyst. He was really nice, she said, giddily.
On the short trek from the grounds to the subway Wednesday, a few others thought they spotted Marcelo Rios, the brooding, retired Chilean with an aversion to grass. Alas, it turned out to be Horacio Rearte, an Argentine coach working with Gilles Muller and a baby-faced Swiss junior.
Thumbs Up
Lars Graff, the veteran ATP chair umpire from Sweden, has gotten his fair share of attention, too. Graff bypassed politics to officiate last year’s classic Wimbledon final—an ITF, rather than an ATP, employee usually gets the nod—between Roddick and Roger Federer, where 30 games were needed in the fifth set to decide a victor.
“Before I was Lars Graff,” he says near the locker room. “Now they say, ‘Here comes the guy who did the Wimbledon final.’ Sometimes I get asked for autographs. Last year when I was flying from Wimbledon to Newport, a stewardess even said to me, ‘Oh, you did the Wimbledon final. Can I get a hug?’” He obliged; she didn’t give him an upgrade.
Television viewers know Graff’s greeting prior to a match, moving his thumb towards the camera and walking backwards at the same relaxed pace. Broadcasters have queried the gesture, at least in England. So, what exactly does it mean? “It’s my trademark thumbs up,” he says with a big smile. “It means another match coming up and you have to be positive. You have to look forward to it and do a good job.”
Comeback Kid No. 1
Rearte was back in blustery west London on Thursday and took the time to discuss Muller, who has underachieved since reaching the U.S. Open quarterfinals in 2008. On paper, the former junior No. 1 with a huge serve and nifty volleys has a game tailor made for grass.
He continues to struggle after battling knee tendonitis, an injury that kept him on the sidelines for six months starting last July. Muller reached a career-high No. 63 in the rankings following his breakthrough at Flushing Meadows, but the health woes pegged him back to 459th this February. The 27-year-old now sits at No. 208.
“He feels better,” Rearte, a Florida resident, says. “He’s just a little bit afraid [of moving] on this surface. He’s careful with the way he’s moving. He will come back, no doubt. That’s one of the reasons he’s not doing so good. He wants to come back right away, but he has to go step by step.”
Comeback Kid No. 2
Another on the comeback trail is Dmitry Tursunov, who topped Muller at a Challenger in Nottingham last week. Small world.
This should have been a prosperous time for Tursunov. The California-based Russian won his first grass-court title last year in Eastbourne, and his only two fourth-round showings at a major came at Wimbledon. But Tursunov, one of the tour’s biggest hitters, missed nine months with a recurring ankle injury. When he returned, he claimed a miserly three games against Spanish journeyman Daniel Gimeno-Traver at Roland Garros. Clay has never been Tursunov’s favorite surface, as he memorably blogged a few years ago, and he was gone in 78 minutes.
Tursunov fell in the second round in Nottingham to Turkey’s lone ranger, Marsel Ilhan, and as a qualifier, departed in the first round at Queen’s Club thanks to Xavier Malisse. (The comeback theme persists.) He admits to being far from fully fit.
“At this very moment I’m 100 percent of what I can do,” Tursunov says in the parking lot, waiting to catch a shuttle to practice courts off site. “It’s hard to get back the timing. It doesn’t matter how much tennis you watch or [how much] know about tennis, you feel a little rusty. From that point of view, it’s going to be a long road back. Mentally, I have to be ready for it.”
Not unexpectedly, other parts of his body lagged and compensated. “It’s all linked to each other,” he says. “It’s kind of interesting in that sense to look at it and see how your shoulder might be linked to your foot.”
Tursunov, No. 36 when he began his absence and currently 144th, faces a huge drop in the rankings since he’s not defending his title in Eastbourne. “Going from 30 to 350 is really difficult to swallow,” he says. “You kind of have to start all over again. Other players really forget you fast. They’re not afraid of you for as long as you would expect. I come out right now and I’m just another guy. They come out and are playing a different way than they would have had I been in the Top 30. A lot of psychologically difficult times.”
Roddick Relaxed
Roddick wasn’t overly traumatized, despite losing to pint-sized Israeli Dudi Sela 6-4, 7-6 (8). The four-time Queen’s winner squandered two set points in the second-set tiebreak, one on his serve.
So, Roddick heads into Wimbledon having contested five matches since early April. “I’m not super concerned about the way I’m hitting the ball,” he said. “I’m not stressing about any one part of my game too much. I had a lot of time practicing before the French, played some matches, had a lot of time practicing here. Now I have a lot of time practicing before Wimbledon. It’s basically getting over my own impatience as opposed to worrying about anything about my game.”
Nadal was asked yet again Wednesday about hard courts and predictably retorted there were too many hard-court tournaments. Roddick took issue with the world No. 1’s stance.
“Rafa and I can agree on a lot of things,” Roddick said. “I just don’t want to turn the hard-court events into clay-court events. If we turned them all into grass-court events, that’s fine by me.”
Rafa's Double Scare
Nadal went longer than expected against Denis Istomin, needing three sets against the improving Uzbek 7-6 (4), 4-6, 6-4. It wasn’t, though, 3 hours, 53 minutes, as the ATP’s “live scores” suggested. Maybe they factored in the rain delay. Blame the wind for Nadal’s cautious overhead on a match point at 5-3 on third.
Ominously, Nadal called for the trainer at the end of the second. “I felt something behind the leg,” he said. “I wanted to check with the physio if it’s something dangerous or not."
By the time the match ended, Nadal said he was feeling good. “I am not thinking right now about go out of the tournament, no?” he said. “I think I play tomorrow, sure, no? Sure, I have to be careful and I have to check a little bit more. We will see, but I hope to be—I would love to be okay for tomorrow. I gonna try my best.”
The fans can seemingly wait for Rafa again Friday.
Ravi Ubha is a freelance writer covering Queen's Club for TENNIS.com.