Week 3- Australian Open

airsmashers · County player

RE: Week 3- Australian Open

RJA · Hall of fame

airsmashers wrote:

All credit to Djokovic, its been said but his retrieving skills were phenomenal

I can't see this loss affecting Andy like last year did, you could see the way he smiled at one point during the match that he just realised Novak was just too good on the day.

He did look surprisingly okay after the match, even joking about trying to keep it together this year. Hopefully he will still play Rotterdam week after next.

I also get the feeling that his lull last spring was also in part due to his break up with Kim.

-- Edited by RJA on Sunday 30th of January 2011 01:52:34 PM

philwrig · Hall of fame

Very disappointing, even after the first couple of games it didn't look good.
The sluggish movement which was in evidence against Ferrer showed again from the start. It looked like I was watching Sod(Murray in this case) playing Murray( Djokovic in this case). Andy was still striking the ball exceptionally well but he was so slow by his own standards that the result was inevitable. Why when he was moving so well in the match against Melzer I haven't got a clue.
Nerves/ lack of fitness can only be reasons why.
When we look back at Andy's career I suspect we will always conclude that the best of 3 set format suited Andy's play by far the best.
Having said all that I am more confident that he will eventually win a grand slam than I was at the beginning of the Aussie open. Eventually I am sure he will win one of these, if you give yourself enough chances eventually you will get over the finish line. Needs to find a way though to rise to the occasion.

RJA · Hall of fame

philwrig wrote:
Having said all that I am more confident that he will eventually win a grand slam than I was at the beginning of the Aussie open. Eventually I am sure he will win one of these, if you give yourself enough chances eventually you will get over the finish line. Needs to find a way though to rise to the occasion.

I don't think it is so much rising to the occasion as learning to deal with the pressure he puts on himself. I don't think anyone can have a go at him for losing twice to Fed and once to Nole and I doubt that many people have faced such good oponents in all 3 of their first finals (Fed, Nadal and Nole all had relatively easy first finals). It is the not really turning up on any of the occasions that should hurt him.

Anyone who says that these defeats mean he won't win a Grand Slam are talking rubbish. Ivan Lendl lost he first 4 Grand Slam finals and was 24 before he won his first. He went on to win 8

-- Edited by RJA on Sunday 30th of January 2011 06:34:24 PM

-- Edited by RJA on Sunday 30th of January 2011 08:40:07 PM

philwrig · Hall of fame

I agree when Andy does win one, he could easily go onto to win several more.
I still stick to my thought that he has to learn to peak at the end of slams and in particular the final. Nole played his best match of the tournament in the final, and yes nerves clearly impacted Andy here, but he does seem to me to run out of steam at the end of a long two weeks.

Armchair · County player

I agree with everything that's been said before, but I think Henman made an interesting comment ( no really). He said that Andy wins well in the earlier rounds of slams and in lesser tournaments with his defensive game. But when he needs to come out with an attacking game against the top seeds he's at a bit of a loss because it's not become his natural way of playing week in week out.

RJA · Hall of fame

Armchair wrote:
I agree with everything that's been said before, but I think Henman made an interesting comment ( no really). He said that Andy wins well in the earlier rounds of slams and in lesser tournaments with his defensive game. But when he needs to come out with an attacking game against the top seeds he's at a bit of a loss because it's not become his natural way of playing week in week out.

That is why I, and others, want to see a more aggressive Murray in most of his matches so he is comfortable doing it when it comes to the big stage. We know that he is able to producing good aggressive performances against the top players in fairly big events, Toronto last yeat being a prime example, so he isn't that far away from putting everything together.

Maza1987 · Challenger level

Hey, finally managed to get on the internet.

I went to work at 10 am already knowing which Andy turned up, so I wasn't surprised to see he got broken early in the second by the time I arrived at work. I only watched bits of the remaining sets whilst following on livescore. I don't need to see the match to know how things unfolded. I can already imagine the lacklustre body language, negative vibes, struggling on serve et cetera. Surprisingly, like Andy, I wasn't as disappointed as I thought I would be directly after the loss. My workmate, the only other person who really understands tennis, took the view, like me, that Andy just has to keep perservering and he WILL win a GS.

Sadly, our gym members were not of the same opinion. THOSE CASUAL TENNIS FANS WHO THINK THEY KNOW IT ALL NEED TO BE STABBED WITH A RUSTY KNIFE. The amount of members who came up to me the rest of the day and started to converse with me about the tennis was unbearable. If I had told them I was a person who has over 5k posts on Andy's official forum, they probably wouldn't have been as disparaging about our Andy.

Seriously, I heard it all today from people who only probably watch 2 or 3 tennis matches a year.

"He's a bottler"
"He finally manages to get to a final without Federer and then he goes and loses to some Serbian bloke". Yes, someone actually called the world no.3 some Serbian bloke.
"He's just like Tim Henman"

And lo and behold

"I've never really taken to him since he made that comment about us (English), never cared for him much". Now I wasn't having that, I explained to the customer the full context of that quote but he came back with, "yeh, well, the sheer fact something like that runs through his mind is enough evidence of his xenophobia". At this point I just decided to end the conversation. You're not getting through to people like that. + I've just got this new job and I don't want to seem rude to the customers.
But I let every naysayer customer know that I will still be supporting him through thick and thin. But then some wise guy replied "hahaha, there hasn't been very much thick though, has there, just lots of thin". I should have slapped him silly!

Anyway, that was my story of what happened today.

To Andy--I'm still with you, just disappointed that you didn't show the world your true abilities on the biggest stage. Congratulations to Novak, he played superlatively.

Take care all.

andyjmr · Intermediate Club Player

Pressure? i thought Andy looked a bit pale - almost unwell?

Did he forget plan B, or did novak not allow him to implement it? yes novak looked very good, but then so did ferrer before andy started to step in and move the ball around.

Swearing, hanging his head, all that bad energy blocking up his body! difficult to watch because we all know he's his own worst enemy at times.

As maza1987 says, just disappointed that he didn't show the world his true abilities.

Montana Doug · Futures qualifying

Just watched the match....it came on at 2:30am and I had to work so much this weekend....so just finished watching it on ESPN 2....I can't believe the stuff that the talking heads shared on there.....really did my head in.....it is like they are writing Andy's season and even career off at this stage of his career wondering if he will ever recover from a defeat such as this esp losing three Grand Slam finals without winning a set....I can't wait to listen to them on the day/night he does win a slam....I just can't wait....

I also wonder like everyone else if he was feeling his best.....just looked a little under the weather....but what do I know? If I knew anything I'd be on ESPN 2 I guess.....

Armchair · County player

I think Madeleine had the best idea, don't read a paper for 48 hours...
Among some of the more reasonable suggestions from our esteemed sports journalists for his loss - wearing an unlucky green shirt. confuse

steven · Tennis legend

wolf wrote:
Andy was wretched, but Nole was outstanding. Even if Andy had played his best I don't think he would have won that.

Agree that Andy just didn't have the belief that he could play the shots he needed to win, and we know he can produce the shots he was trying normally so it could only have been the pressure of the occasion.

That's the best I've ever seen Djokovic play though. His level of defence was out of this world at times.

The Serb was a deserving winner of this tournament, easily the best player right the way through.

I agree with all that, but it was disappointing how after showing much more controlled aggression throughout the tournament, he seemed to go back into a more passive mode in the Final, particularly after Nole got the upper hand, which of course was exactly when he most needed to change things up.

Who knows how much of a reaction that was to the pressure of it being a Final and to what was coming at him from the opposite side of the net though - Novak's retrieving in the Final reminded me of Andy's own retrieving at its very best and the Serb's speed and ability to play brilliant shots at a stretch were mind-boggling.

I don't think there was much in it in the 1st set though - both were playing well but not brilliantly until Andy let the last game of the set slip away (Nole even mentioned in a post-match interview that he thought this was the key game of the match) and it seems more than plausible to me that if Andy had won the 1st set, he might have started playing with more freedom and Nole might have been the one who tightened up. In other words, I don't think the one-sided nature of the final scoreline means Andy never had a chance yesterday.

We also need to remember that Nole beat Berdych and Fed in straight sets too, so it's not like Andy coped significantly worse with Nole in that form than they did.

Tigger was absolutely right though when he said that while the controlled aggression Andy showed in his earlier matches was very welcome (and no doubt contributed to how easily he got through the first week), he needs to try to play like that week in, week out so that it becomes his natural style of play.

RJA's comments about Andy's seemingly better mental state after this year's Final make sense - he has seemed more relaxed during this tournament than I can remember seeing him at any previous slam. I wonder if part of the reason for the break up with Kim last year was that he was treating tennis as the be-all and end-all of his life (perhaps feeling like he had to do that to have a chance of winning a slam), such that losing the AO last year made it feel like his whole world had imploded and that he had thrown away everything else that mattered in his life for nothing. We'll probably never know (and nor should we) but it would explain things quite well.

The most encouraging thing about this AO is that Andy managed to put himself in another slam Final. If he keeps doing that, then even if he continues to struggle to play his very best in slam Finals, one day he'll come across one of the big three not playing their best there either ... or he'll sneak the 1st set against one of them like he could so easily have done yesterday and then find he can play with more freedom ... or if all else fails, one day he'll end up in a Final against a player from the level below like the big three did when they won their first slams ... and it'll probably happen when we least expect it!

indiana · Tennis legend

Such a pity for the lad cry

I have been adopting the Madeline approach since the final, had little reads here but not commented, otherwise just divorcing myself from any other tennis forums, radio discussions, newspapers and anything where you just know there would be some unadulterated tosh that would not exactly help my blood pressure. I would have so hated to have been in the position poor Maza was yesterday.

Why is all this ? It's because I care about Andy, I care a lot. Oh yes, he can certainly make himself difficult to take to for a few reasons, but underneath there is a rather quirky but can clearly be quite fun guy behind what we often see and a guy desperate to get to the very top. Of course for me him being Scottish was an initial extra attraction but that doesn't always work with me, don't get me started on Colin Montgomerie

Anyway having always followed tennis to a degree it was Andy that prompted so much more interest in first him and then British tennis in general.

Yes, I was desperate for him to win, as would most here to varying degrees, but I am sure noone was really more disappointed than Andy himself. Though I agree he seems to have taken it better than last year, possibly related to personal issues. Nothing is achieved by calling him a loser, wretched or whatever, he didn't want to lose !!

As to the match, to me I do think there seems to be nerves playing a part caused by an almost too desperate wish to get that maiden Slam win. I listed before how he had more losses than wins in Slam SFs. Slam QFs and particularly Masters Series finals so he performs in big matches but Slams finals are the real biggee, they are real history and he does seem effected. Whether there was also any physical element is not really clear, I suspect seemingly poorer movement may have been caused to a fair degree by the occasion.

After his opening three wins here where he played decently but wasn't tested and a very good performance against Melzer, to me Andy has played "scared" tennis in the later rounds, as I particukarly mentioned against Dolgoplov. He so wants to get there and it seems to effect his game, shown in to extents tightening up from very good positions as against both Dolgoplov and Ferrer and his strange inability to change up or down or whatever against Djokovic.

As has been mentioned I was particularly surprised that he just didn't go to the net more often. 1) To give Djoko different looks and 2) to me there were actually clear chances and time to get to the net when Djoko had occasionally dropped shorter and from Andy's shot there was very little chance of a particularly positive reply. Credit to Djokovic's great defensive abilities but it makes life a hell of a lot easier on the defensive if you can assume there won't be anyone threatening the net.

I'm in way qualified to give any sort of psycholgical advice, but I just so hope Andy can bring so much closer to his best game to the final if and when he gets the next chance. At the moment it would appear a Rafa final where he seems clear in his tactics and just takes him on positively ( but would he in a Slam final ? ) or a lesser surprise finalist seems his best bet. But I would love an Andy to turn up with the game that we know can get the best of Federer and Djokovic,

Congratulations to Novak he played very well. He has clocked up now getting to at least the quarters 15 occasions ( Andy 7 ), semis 10 ( Andy 5 ) and final 4 ( Andy 3 ). If you keep getting to late stages in time you should get rewards.

Keep at it Andy son, you have the talent, play with a more consistent clear more positive strategy and ( somehow ) get in the right mindset and your time should hopefully come. Agassi and Lendl lost their first 3 and first 4 Slam finals respectively before each going to win 8 Slam titles.

Oh, and nearly forgot my long time main issue with Andy - his serve ! As I commented when it was said he had been working more on his serve in the close season - Hallelujah ! Much work still to be done, me thinks. A consistently reliable serve rather than one which just really sparks from time to time, and often not in big matches, would make him so much more of a threat. It seems almost accepted that say a mid 50s first serve % in rate is "quite good for Andy". Please work on it much more, mate ! Ideally, it would even be real weapon rather than hoping he breaks more than he loses serve, bit like Spurs almost seeming to hope at times they score more than they concede

-- Edited by indiana on Monday 31st of January 2011 01:27:10 PM

steven · Tennis legend

Lendl's quite an interesting case in point - just like Andy, he lost slam finals when he was 21 (RG to Borg), 22 (USO to Connors) and 23 (twice - USO to Connors & AO to Wilander) - Lendl won his first slam (RG v McEnroe) when he was 24.

He then lost two more slam finals (making it 6 of his first 7) before going 7-5 in slam finals from the age of 25 onwards. Not bad for a late developer!

-- Edited by steven on Monday 31st of January 2011 12:58:09 PM

stevemcqueen · Futures qualifying

Pub quiz question for tennis nerds.....

Which player(s) have reached more than one Grand Slam final but not won a Grand Slam title?