You may have forgotten by now, but we started 2011 with the beginnings of a youth movement on the men’s side. One by one, name by name, the first week of the Australian Open introduced us to Milos Raonic, Grigor Dimitrov, Bernard Tomic, and Alexandr Dolgopolov. It’s been a bumpy 10 months for all of these young players, filled with injuries (Raonic), creeping but frustrating improvement (Dimitrov), and results that swing violently from one event to the next (Tomic, Dolgopolov). Now, though, as the season winds down, they were all healed, all playing decent tennis, and, along with two other members of their up-and-down generation, Ryan Harrison and Donald Young, all in action on the second day at the Shanghai Masters.
Overall, the kids were all right: Raonic, Harrison, Tomic, and Dolgo won, while Dimitrov and Young lost tight matches to Roddick and Wawrinka, respectively. Here’s a little of what they did, from what I could see many miles away.
It’s young vs. old day all over the grounds, but the Tennis Channel begins with a look at the tour as it is right now, a face-off between two solid mid-level veterans who have been gradually improving for the last two years, Feliciano Lopez and Janko Tipsarevic. It’s early, it’s still half-dark, and it’s very quiet, both in my neighborhood and in the big empty stadium in Shanghai. All of which makes for odd viewing: While Lopez and Tipsarevic play a long, close first set and give us their share of excellent shotmaking (especially Lopez), it feels like they’re doing it in a vacuum—all you can hear is the ball meeting the strings and echoing for what seems like miles. With so little fan reaction, or noise of any sort, it’s hard to recognize how well they’re playing. That is, until Lopez storms the net in two big steps and slaps down a forehand volley for a winner, then follows it up with a crosscourt forehand pass that clips the sideline. Both shots are greeted with silence, but they’re impressive nonetheless. Lopez is not Nadal, and Tipsarevic is not Djokovic, but the Spaniard’s 6 and 6 win is a pretty fair time-capsule example of men’s tennis today.
Milos Raonic is back; you can tell by the total lack of expression from his end of the court. All I get to see is his third-set tiebreaker with Michael Llodra, but it’s enough to be reminded of what the Canadian does and doesn’t do well. He still serves huge, and he can still take a forehand from behind the baseline, drive it deep, and follow it all the way to the net for a putaway volley. But that shotgun forehand also makes Raonic itchy on the trigger and liable to pull it one shot too early in a rally. At 6-5 in the breaker, Raonic smashes a serve on the sideline and slams home the next forehand for a winner and the match. It’s been a long one, and as close as it could be. But it hasn’t been enough to elicit a reaction from Raonic. He walks straight to the net and waits to shake Llodra’s hand, then walks straight to his chair to collect his stuff. He’ll play old friend David Ferrer, who beat him easily in Melbourne, next.
Is showmanship on the way out in the post-Djokovic generation? If Raonic is expressionless, Bernard Tomic takes it even further—it can be hard to tell at times how hard he’s trying, and like the Canadian, he barely pauses to celebrate a very big win today over Mardy Fish. Tomic is trying, of course, hard enough that he tightens up while serving for the match. But his loose walk and ambivalent demeanor ultimately work in his favor. Like everything else about the eccentrically skilled young Aussie, they keep his opponents guessing. For more on Tomic’s upset win, see my Racquet Reaction here.
A stat: By the middle of the first set between Andy Roddick and Grigor Dimitrov today, Dimitrov had hit 11 winners and made 17 unforced errors, while Roddick had exactly one of each.
Roddick, in his later, conservative years, has become a kind of litmus test. He doesn’t hit many winners and commits very few errors, so it’s up to you to make your shots and make things happen. Traditionally, though it’s not as true as it once was, Roddick has beaten the players he’s supposed to beat and lost to the players he’s supposed to lose to. He’s very good at assessing his opponent’s weaknesses and waiting for them to show up and bite them at the crucial moment.
That’s essentially what happened today against Dimitrov. The Bulgarian’s soft spot—and it’s very soft right now—is his backhand, especially his slice backhand. He chops at it and puts it in the net regularly. Roddick, naturally, was content to play to that side, and Dimitrov couldn’t hold steady with it long enough. He struggled to get more than three in a row in the court.
To me, this is an example of how difficult it is to be a great tennis player, and to fulfill even the most sky-high potential. Grigor Dimitrov has a lot going for him. He can soar for a forehand like a dancer, and open up the court when he hits it. He serves well and has great touch and flair in all parts of the court. But for all of his full-flight talents, unless he learns to do the very basic and earthbound task of getting his backhand into the court four, five, or 10 times in a row, he’s not going to make good on the rest of his artistic abilities. There's no way around the fundamentals.
To paraphrase Bon Scott, it’s a long way to the top if want to hit a tennis ball. If any of these young guys do one-fourth as much as Federer or Nadal or Djokovic, they’ll be lucky. They might even count themselves lucky to be the next Feliciano Lopez or Janko Tipsarevic.