Wednesday, August 31, 2005

First Big Upset: Watched the first two sets of Roddick's stinging loss to Gilles Muller last night. The commentary was surprisingly bad. Usually I like McEnroe's points, but it took a long time for Mac (or his play-by-play buddy) to realize that Muller had done his homework on Roddick. Muller is obviously not the power player Roddick is, and his game is not as complete, but he dissected Roddick's weaknesses like Ivan Lendl last night, hitting to his backhand, serving to the lines, and playing the volley. Muller's net game is mediocre, to be sure, but he kept Roddick from playing his typical bash-from-the-baseline game.

In the end, it appeared that Roddick had thought this match would be a near-walkover. Consequently, he didn't look too familiar with Muller's game, and looked very uncomfortable against a lefty. It was a good match and a great upset.

On the ladies' side, I saw the end of Davenport's win over Li Na. True, Lindsay won in straight sets, but she was really slow to close the door, dropping several match points on the way. She won't get past Dementieva or Patty Schnyder playing that way, and that's just the competition in her bracket.

1 comment:

enobarbus said...

He briefly tried to play serve-and-volley after it was clear that Muller had his number. Didn't work. He was soon back at the baseline. A lot of commentators are saying "Roddick's game was really off." Maybe, but Andy put in 72% of his first serves with 17 of them aces, and hit half as many unforced errors as Muller. he just got beat.