!Picby Pete Bodo
WIMBLEDON, England—At the start of today's first-round match between wild card David Goffin and No. 20 seed—and defending quarterfinalist—Bernard Tomic, Goffin looked even smaller than his reported 5'11", while Tomic looked much larger than his official 6'5". But as the match progressed, Goffin grew larger and larger, and Tomic shrank and ultimately disappeared from this tournament, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4.
Thus, Goffin, who rode his "lucky loser" status to overnight recognition if not outright stardom at the French Open (where he lost in the fourth round to Roger Federer), justifed his wild card, while Tomic confirmed his reputation as a one of the most promising head cases on tour. The 19-year old Aussie's best shot today proved to be his racquet smash; he busted one up when he was broken in the first game of the third set, and after he punched a forehand wide on match point he violated another one. It took him four explosive whaps to wreck that second stick, but I don't think those shots will show up as unforced errors on his stats sheet. The 32 conventional ones Tomic coughed up were enough to help seal his fate.
This was, inexplicably, my first visit to Court No. 2, the newly resurrected (ahem) "Graveyard Court," and I guess it lived up to the name it earned for the site hosting so many upsets. I'm not sure that Tomic's name can be said in the same breath as that of John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, Pete Sampras, Martina Hingis, or Venus and Serena Williams (all of whom lost on the old Court 2), but then nothing about the new 2 suggests ghouls, cobwebs, or cracked headstones. It may be the model stadium, with a capacity of 4,000 and dark walls so close to the court that the pale-green turf pops with color and makes the characters and tableau unfolding on it seem slightly unreal—just a little too clean and intriguing-looking for those white-clad figures to be regular human beings.
Tomic is a gifted player, although one of his outstanding gifts appears to be sloth. When it doesn't get out of hand, as it progressively would today, that enhances the sense that he plays something like the tennis equivalent of jazz. He appears to put little effort into his shots, which is somewhat unusual in a kid so big. And he's loose-limbed, flat-footed, and limp-wristed. While his standard-issue two-handed backhand is an appealing, no nonsense, flat and powerful tack-driver, he's constantly seduced into hitting under the ball, and he cuts a dazzling variety of slice and backspin shots.
Tomic likes to play mind games with his forehand, which is a shot he appears to paint rather than hit. His brushwork is not just excellent, it's creative. There's nothing regimented or rote about the shot, to the point where the apparent lack of discipline might actually be a handicap. He cocks that wrist and abandons any pretense to a conventional backswing or follow-through. You just don't know what's coming next, and he wraps the racquet head around the ball every which way. At one point today he tried to hit a drop shot with a regular forehand swing by—sort of—arresting the racquet head a moment before contact and hitting around the side of the ball, instead of through it.
I guess you had to be there.
The problem for Tomic was that Goffin was there, all there. And guys who answer, "present!" when the roll is taken are the kind that can flummox the roguishly talented. Tomic won the first set thanks to an early break, and seemed to have mesmerized Goffin about as thoroughly as he seduced the spectators. But the more chances you give a worker bee like Goffin, the more likely he is to find his groove, settle in, and do what seems to come most naturally to him—hang in there, work to find a rythm, give the other guy plenty of opportunity to bring himself to ruin. The short name for all that is "smart tennis."
The process of Tomic's ruination began right after he won that set. After a Goffin hold, Tomic ran the Belgian ragged in the next game (during which Goffin was so jerked-around that at one point his legs just flew out from under him). When he's in command like that, Tomic appears to make the ball do what he wants—less with effort than through some weird and possibly illegal form of telepathy. He also can look nothing less than insolent, just standing there, dictating, moving only when he must—and never with a great deal of enthusiasm. But Goffin was poised enough to keep his head down and mind his own business. He hung in there patiently through a long second game and the reward he got for the punishment he absorbed was a break.
Tomic broke Goffin right back in the next game and, after a few quick holds, Goffin broke again—this time for a more dangerous 4-2 lead. In the next game, Tomic faced one of those deep-cover turning points that are so easy to miss. At 15-all, he shambled into the forecourt and smacked an easy forehand putaway wide. Given that Goffin seemed somewhat prone to feeling the pressure up to that point, the difference between 15-30 and 30-15 could have been huge. With the cushion instead of under it, he went on to win the game. After a quick hold by Tomic, Goffin showed that he'd turned the corner, confidence-wise, and served out the set with no trouble.
Serving first in the third, Tomic struggled and failed to hold a long game when he pushed a forehand wide. He showed his first serious sign of frustration when he destroyed his racquet, and Goffin was able to hang onto that break to run out the set, taking strength from his opponent's dissatisfactions.
Even without significant breaks, there was nothing boring about the action, something that can probably be attributed to the fact that neither of these mens' serves can be described as heavy artillery. What aces Goffin hit (he had 11 to Tomic's five) were of the underwhelming 96 M.P.H. variety, and that may be problematic for Goffin going forward. For his part, Tomic leaps straight up, like a salmon, before he delivers. But when a salmon jumps it's quickly accompanied by a resounding splash. Those 115 M.P.H. serves of Tomic's are quiet affairs that cause barely a ripple.
That's alright, Tomic prefers to play cat-and-mouse tennis anyway. But that usually means the mouse has a shot—provided the cat goofs up the way Tomic did today.The last of those critical goofs occurred early in the fourth set, when Tomic surrendered a break in just the third game. The salutory effect this had on Goffin was obvious in the next game, which may have been Goffin's best of the match. He sent chalk flying with a pair of bullet-like aces, missed on a cute serve-and-drop-volley combo, but slammed the door shut immediately with a hold. Gifted with an early break once again, Goffin never had to face a gut check, even though Tomic held his own games with imperious ease. Among other things, this match demonstrated that on grass, even a guy with a 100 M.P.H. serve (which applies to either player) can hold with ease—if he hits his spots. It's an underestimated feature of the grass-court game.
To his credit, Tomic took the loss like an adult. He said he lost concentration after winning the first set and admitted that it was a mistake to allow a player of Goffin's "quality" to to get back into the match. He also confessed that he hasn't been working hard enough, and just coasted along on his talent recently—with unsatisfying results.
"Look, to have talent is one thing," he said. "To have talent, it's huge for any sport. I think the last few months. . .I have sort of slacked off a little bit and look what it's costing me. It's just strange. I mean, like on the way up I have been growing up playing and everything's got easy. I've gotten to where I have won very easily. It's amazing. Now you let the foot off the pedal and it's costing you. It's something I'll learn.
"It's a good thing what's actually happened here. I'll wake up and get back to the way I was playing. . .and get back to that training mode to get me to the Top 15, 20 at the end of the year even."
For his part, Goffin played the right match, which in this case means a smart match. That's a good sign for him, because while he's a new factor on the tour, he's not exactly a kid anymore. At 21, he has two years on Tomic. That's a long time when it comes to the process of maturation, and that showed.
"It wasn't good start (for me), but I was feeling good," Goffin said. "I lost the first set, but I was feeling good and then continued to keep focus in my game. Game after game it was better, and then I played really, really good game. I served very well during all the match, and I was more aggressive after the first set. He was running, and me, I was inside the court."
Goffin settled a good strategy to use against a player who likes to hyptonize players, to sit back and invite them to win. It takes nicely modulated aggression to triumph over that ploy, but Goffin knew what he was up against.
"When I started the match, I was a little bit nervous because I didn't know how to play against him with his forehand, with the spin, different spin, you know, with his forehand." Goffin admitted. "On grass it was not easy to play. But, yeah, after one set I found my way to hit the ball. Then when I was feeling good in the second set. So, yeah, I'm pretty happy."
So happy he might have been 10 feet tall.