I’ve never fully understood the question, “Which is the hardest tournament to win?” The French Open is the most popular answer, but in that case shouldn’t the question be, "What’s the most grueling tournament?" Or, "What tournament gets your socks the reddest?" When it comes to overall difficulty, aren’t all of the majors equally tough, since all of the world’s top players are there and primed to play their best? When, say, Pete Sampras was No. 1, wouldn’t Wimbledon have qualified as the toughest to win for the other 127 players in the draw? Conversely, you can hardly say the French has been the most difficult for Rafael Nadal to win. It’s hard for him to lose there.
Anyway, sorry for beginning this post on a tangent, but the thought hit me while watching Shanghai today. That’s because the same question of difficulty is often posed about the majors and the Masters: Which is “tougher”? At the former, you play three of five with a day of rest in between; at the latter, you play two of three, possibly for five days in a row. I’ve always sided with the majors, because that’s where, for lack of a better cliché, champions are made. But this morning, when I flipped on my TV and saw that poor old beat-up over-30-year-old Juan Carlos Ferrero had to go out again, 24 hours after winning a three-setter over one of his countrymen, Fernando Verdasco, and face another, much more determined countryman, David Ferrer, I had to admit: The Masters are pretty tough.
Here’s a look at day four from Shanghai.
Ferrero, nevertheless, came out firing, as if he’d had a good month’s rest. He won the first set 6-1 and threatened in the second. But then Ferrer did what he does—i.e., he stayed the same. Tennis's bricklayer just keeps pushing forward, from one point to the next, like he's pushing a wheelbarrow. Watching him gut out the second set and then twist the knife in the third, I started to think that Ferrer is in an enviable position from a psychological standpoint. Unlike his other countryman, Rafael Nadal, he’s not expected to win every tournament he enters, or virtually any tournament he enters, for that matter. He’s Top 10, he makes great money, but if he loses, Ferrer just moves on to the next event and tries his best there. You don’t see a lot of angst from the guy. If Nadal loses a first set to Ferrero, the Internet blows up with “end of an era,” “Nadal is done,” “What the bleep is wrong with Rafa?” talk. When Ferrer loses that first set, nobody says he’s finished, nobody says the Ferrer Era is over, nobody says anything. Moral? Aim for No. 6 in life, not No. 1. You won’t have the pressure, but you’ll still get the dough.
It’s too bad no one really cares about the fall Masters events, because they offer some of the most entertaining and varied tennis of the year. The courts in Shanghai and Paris are quicker than those used at the other 1000s, and you can see the result: more attacking and more net play. Florian Mayer was all over it in his win against Nadal today, but he hasn’t been the only one to have success up there. Percentages of net points won have been solid across the board. Grigor Dimitrov was 17 of 20 in a losing effort against Andy Roddick; Kei Nishikori was 16 of 19 in a winning effort over Tsonga; Mayer was 21 of 29 against Nadal. More players have snuck in behind their serves than normal this week. It’s an easy way for Andy Murray in particular to get more aggressive and use his normally underused quickness and hands in the forecourt.
Of course, it hasn’t all been a cake walk up there. Tsonga was 9 for 19 in his losing effort to Nishikori. But while it may not be translatable to other, slower surfaces, those kinds of winning percentages make me believe that the net, despite the power and spin of the modern ground stroke, is still there for the taking.
What about Andy Murray? The questions seem to be what they always seem to be at this time of year: Is he for real? Do these fall wins mean anything for his Slam chances? The track record isn’t good. Murray dominated the fall a few years ago and came to Melbourne the prohibitive favorite, only to get sick and lose early. He won Shanghai last year and then went down in flames in the Aussie final.
If I didn’t know better, though, I'd say that Murray’s win over Nadal in Tokyo had the makings of a game-changer. First, he finally seems to have absorbed the lessons that Novak Djokovic has taught us about how to play Nadal. Murray stood on the baseline and used his backhand like a forehand to move Rafa and defuse his topspin. Second, unlike at Wimbledon, where one errant forehand caused him to go back into his defensive shell, Murray kept pushing forward even after losing the first set. He has been undecided about how to play Rafa lately, but this time he tried to win with his forehand and with aggression, and he was rewarded for it. If he can’t carry that plan into his next match with Rafa at a major, he’ll never win one.
As for Murray’s sketchier win over Stan Wawrinka today, it reminded me of something former Chicago Bulls coach Phil Jackson once said about his wild man player Dennis Rodman. The Zen Master believed that Rodman, over the course of a season, would build up some “weird energy” that had to come out in some way. The same seems true for Murray. He was coming off two straight tournament wins and he had won the first set over Wawrinka, but when the second started Murray needed to let out some weird negative energy of his own. For the first time, he started to look at his player box. Then he started to yell at it. Then he started to play poorly. Then he started to curse. Then he started to pull his clothes. But when the third set began, it was gone, and he made a point of trying to fire himself up again.
For now, I won’t worry about Murray’s Slam chances when he’s picking up the slack for the rest of the Big 4 in the fall.
You can add Rafael Nadal to that list of slacking stars. He lost to Florian Mayer in straights today. It was an upset, of course, but not a huge surprise. First, Nadal is never at his best in the fall—when was the last time he won a Masters event during this time of year, Madrid 2005? And second, Mayer, whom Nadal had never played, is a tricky matchup for Rafa. The German has a two-handed backhand that, like Djokovic and Murray, he can use like a forehand to dictate. He can also hit flat and through the court. And he has a good wide serve that hooks to Nadal’s backhand.
Mayer had all of that working and more today. He lost a total of four points on his first serve. He hit crosscourt backhand winners and kept Nadal off balance by looping forehands high to his backhand. He even put Rafa on a string with his jumping drop shot and lob combination.
I didn’t think Nadal played badly overall. He was disconsolate about his return afterward, and he should be. He had no answers for Mayer’s serve. Nadal grew uncharacteristically tentative when he was up 4-2 in the first-set tiebreaker, and at 4-4 he made an even more uncharacteristic poor decision when he ran way wide in the deuce court to hit a forehand return and nearly put it in the seats. Is this a residual lack of confidence after his beatings by Djokovic? Or was this just not his day, the same way it wasn’t his day against Melzer here last year? I’d vote for the latter. I think it’s easy to make too much of the Djokovic defeats and their long-term effect on his mentality when he faces lesser players. Nadal lost to Ivan Dodig in Montreal and came back to reach the U.S. Open final.
Plus, Mayer played great. He had played equally well against Nalbandian earlier in the event, and I should have seen this one coming. Mayer, 28, has always been fatally streaky, and has always had much more game than his results would indicate. Who else can do as many different and strange things on a tennis court—from two-handed volleys to jumping backhands to jumping drop shots—yet make them all fit together smoothly?
Even his celebration was eccentric. After he landed a backhand pass on the baseline at match point, Mayer put his hands behind his head and rolled his eyes upward. Joy didn't come first; disbelief did. Believe it, Florian, you were that good.
And believe it, tennis fans, he joins Lopez, Dolgopolov, and Matthew Ebden in the quarters of Shanghai. These Masters are tough. (Weird, too.)