Well, i was fortunate enough to see nearly the entire federer - starace match today as well as bits of other matches, so here are some thoughts:
(1) federer looks good, and i mean real good. granted he had an unusually high number of unforced errors, he once again won a match without dropping a set and i think he only faced break point three or four times.... so he was very much in control all match.
(2) his serve was on today, he came up with five aces and he used his second serve to set up some nice winners.
(3) he didn't play with quite the urgency he played his second round match with, which i would perhaps attribute to him trying to ensure that his groundstrokes are all firing on all cylinders for these later rounds. in TMF's 2nd round match he played a lot of serve and volley tennis, likely due to him wanting to finish the match before any rain/darkness could move in and force him to have to finish up the next day. this allowed him to demonstrate some volleys that were simply unbelievable. today, he executed solid net play once again when necessary, but he spent a lot more time at the baseline. i'm hopeful this all leads to TMF getting to face Rafa and then playing an aggressive in control style of play like he did in the hamburg final.
(4) the ferrero-youzhny match was unbelievable. i saw only bits of it, but i do know that both the first two sets went to tiebreakers and they both lasted over 70 minutes a piece. talk about an endurance test. youzhny emerged the victor knocking off the former roland garros champion and setting up a match with TMF. youzhny has never defeated feds, but it should still prove to be a great match as youzhny's little dance after finishing ferrero showed he is definitely enjoying himself and his role of giant-killer if you will (granted, ferrero was only the 13 seed and youzhny is 17).
(5) wiley advanced again today although he did drop a set this time. i'm not sure it could get anymore interesting for the federer fans than if roger was to face canas in the semis and then rafa in the final. should he face those two and beat them to win the french.. i'm not sure victory comes any sweeter than that.
well, that's today's roland garros wrap up. i found a cheap bar/club tonight that shows the open and serves cheap drinks while doing so. therefore, i will likely end up there for a chunk of tomorrow to watch rafa play, so hopefully i can provide a bit of a report on his play as well as the man is now 15-0 at the french in his life and is clearly unbelievable on the red dirt.
bis morgen!
-riley.
2 comments:
Riles, I actually want to rescind the comments I made about the James-Wade rivalry. I thought about it and this is what I came up with. Don't get me wrong, what Wade did last year was incredible. But that is about how high I can envision him being at. After watching Lebron's past two performances, I don't know where his ceiling actually is. After this, he may go and lay an egg the next two games. But from what I saw, the man has no ceiling and that's scary. This is because Wade,I think has reached his ceiling, albeit a very high one, while with Lebron, I have no idea where it is.
i understand that comment choi. somewhere, not sure where, i read a quote by lebron, who when asked how he has gotten around the pistons' goal of shutting him down which worked well in games 1-2, said something to the effect of 'i just told myself i will not let them stop me'
if he can just turn it up a notch when he needs to so that arguably one of the best defensive teams in the game can't stop him... who can?
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