Rome R2: Andy v Juan Monaco

zarrafak · Lower Club Player

RE: Rome R2: Andy v Juan Monaco

Craven91 · Lower Club Player

Monaco wins 1-6 6-3 7-5 disbelief

-- Edited by Craven91 on Wednesday 29th of April 2009 01:56:34 PM

Madeline · Admin:Moderator + Tennis Legend

Well, that was rubbish, Andy. cry

GavinUK · Lower Club Player

What a disappointment. Andy played really well in places and then at other times didn't seem very awake at all. And there was me and others I'm sure, thinking Andy would overtake Novak this week. Oh well, we all have our off days.

kundalini · Specialist Reporter + Intermediate Club Player

Strange match. Played a lot better in the third set but fell to pieces right at the end with a miserable service game. Andy's defensive tennis on clay is not good enough for him to win matches against decent opponents unless they are playing rubbish. For the first set Monaco was desperately poor and he wasn't that impressive in the 2nd set either, but he produced a lot of good tennis in the third set and Andy couldn't afford errors such as the double fault to start the 5-5 game or the strange backhand slice at 5-6 15-15 after a brilliant crosscourt forehand had given him control of the point.

Drop shot was very poor today while Monaco won plenty with his. But his volleys looked good and aggressive backhands and forehands were fine on the few occasions he chose to deploy them. He really needs to do a lot more than sit deep behind the baseline and hope his opponent makes a stupid error.

-- Edited by kundalini on Wednesday 29th of April 2009 02:10:28 PM

ForeverDelayed · Grand Slam Champion

Not totally surprised by the result to be honest, as even though Murray had a good week on the clay in Monte Carlo, he was never really overly convincing in his play and there were plenty of faults with it, and with Monaco being a very good clay court player, he got found out here today.

Still struggles with the movement on clay, and his groundstrokes are just not big enough on the clay and the moment - he has to realise that he cannot just push the ball around on clay as it doesn't work unless he's hitting with a lot more spin than he does.

It's probably shown that Murray still isn't the player on a clay court that is going to threaten to win any major titles, and that he could still be in trouble against a good, solid, clay court player.

zarrafak · Lower Club Player

7-5 Monaco.
- Andy paid the price for his non-aggression. He would probably also have benefitted from playing an easier first round "warm up" before this.

- All credit to Monaco though - he seems to have fine-tuned his game to perfection here over the last week or so, and still looks a threat on clay.

He really needs to find a way to win on clay that doesn't inolve standing 12 feet behind the baseline and running everything down - Monaco was able to play any number of drop shots on key points.
- And you just can't change direction that easily on damp clay.

Not too much damage though with few points to defend.
- I'm sure he'll find a way.

-- Edited by zarrafak on Wednesday 29th of April 2009 02:07:44 PM

Madeline · Admin:Moderator + Tennis Legend

Has anybody looked at the statistics for this match? I can't copy and paste them, because I read them from the livescore results and it won't let you copy.

Apart from first serve %, Andy was ahead in every category!

Silly boy lost the points that mattered, though. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall when Team Murray met after the match. . .

Salmon · Tennis legend

helki · Futures qualifying

I see J Mónaco saw off Cilic (15) today, 6-4 6-4. Nice little warm-up match Andy gave him yesterday. yawn