In Top Shape, González Aims to Topple Federer
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By CHRISTOPHER CLAREY
THE NEW YORK TIMES
MELBOURNE, Saturday, Jan. 27 — Roger Federer has already snuffed out the hopes here of one longtime foil who thought that his improved backhand, soaring confidence and new American coach might help him break the habit of losing to the world’s No. 1 player.
Now, Federer will be favored to do the same to Fernando González of Chile in the men’s final of the Australian Open on Sunday.
Like Andy Roddick, González has been gathering momentum in recent months. He is now in the form of his life and Friday, one night after Federer crushed Roddick in the semifinals, González was as brutally efficient in his semifinal against Tommy Haas of Germany.
While Federer allowed Roddick only six games, González allowed Haas only five, winning, 6-1, 6-3, 6-1.
At least González has an edge in one category as he heads into his first Grand Slam final against a man who has already won nine of them.
“He’s winning all the time; he has to lose sometimes,” González said of Federer. “I’m going to try to do it on Sunday.”
Haas had already beaten two members of the top 10 — David Nalbandian and Nikolay Davydenko — on his way to the semifinals. But he could not get so much as a break point against the 10th-seeded González, who had his way from all parts of the court.
“Pretty similar to Roger last night,” Haas said, accepting his defeat with the same good grace that Roddick accepted his.
Jim Courier, who won the Australian Open in 1992 and 1993, has a good term for beatings like these. He calls them “bone crushings,” and it will be intriguing to see whether González, who has never beaten Federer in nine previous matches, can produce something more compelling than Federer’s latest straight-set victory in the final.
“Roger’s the No. 1 player in the world by far,” González said. “He’s the favorite. I lost many times with him, but I’m playing much better than the last time we played, and it’s only one match.”
At 26, González is late to make this sort of breakthrough. Until now, the highlight of his career was winning the men’s doubles with his compatriot Nicolas Massu at the 2004 Summer Olympics. Their gold medal was the first for Chile in any sport, and Massu followed it up by taking the gold in the singles, too, and González settled for bronze.
But González has shaken up his personal life and professional life in the past eight months, dating the Argentine tour player Gisela Dulko and hiring the veteran coach Larry Stefanki, a Californian who once helped the Russian Yevgeny Kafelnikov and González’ fellow Chilean Marcelo Rios reach No. 1 in the world.
“Always I was playing the same and same,” González said. “I needed to do some other things.”
It has been a question of improving shot selection and technique; it has been a question of the confidence and new energy that a change can bring. Since fighting off the towering and promising Juan Martin del Potro of Argentina in the second round, González has been close to untouchable, beating four members of the top 20 with the loss of only one set.
He has beaten a grinder: the former world No. 1 Lleyton Hewitt. He has beaten two aggressive baseliners with asymmetric, forehand-based games: the second-seeded Rafael Nadal and the fifth-seeded James Blake. He has also beaten an all-court threat with a more balanced approach: the 12th-seeded Haas.
González has done it all in grand style, and he was at his grandest against Haas, finishing with a slightly surreal three unforced errors and 42 winners.
“I’ve been playing many years with 45 unforced errors and three winners,” González joked, referring to his high-risk former style. “So now I try to work a little more the points. I can run better, can play five sets if I want.”
Rios, now retired, was a surly left-hander with tremendous touch and a fragile physique who lost in the 1998 Australian Open final to Petr Korda. González is a much more affable sort with a swashbuckling style defined by his bazooka of a forehand, a natural shot that has generated gasps from spectators when they have seen (and heard) it firsthand.
There were still plenty of huge forehands Friday against Haas, the 28-year-old who also lost in the semifinals here in 1999 and 2002. But González, with blocks of Chilean fans dancing and chanting inside and outside Rod Laver Arena, also came up with plenty of other masterstrokes: leaping high for backhand overheads, sprinting forward to answer a good drop shot with a better one, whipping up on the ball to hit a topspin lob winner and serving big, very big, to the corners.
He also teased errors from Haas with his now-versatile backhand. In recent years, González often tried to hit it as hard as his forehand, but he has tempered that impulse now that he has improved and simplified the shot.
“When I started working with Fernando, I asked him, ‘Why do you play like that?’ ” Stefanki said, referring to his tendency to go for broke with his ground strokes. “He told me that he just knew if the rally went on for long, he’d miss on the backhand side.”
One of Stefanki’s techniques is to improve his players’ upper-body control so they improve their margin for error as they move toward contact. “Roger is a good example, because he moves with the lower body, but his upper body is still on both sides,” Stefanki said.
He emphasizes 2-player-on-1 drills to get his charges accustomed to a higher rate of speed and reaction. “It has to feel like slow motion when the ball is moving along at 130 miles an hour in a match,” Stefanki said.
Slowing down Federer remains the ultimate challenge, however, and unless González can maintain his celestial level in the wondrous new world of a Grand Slam final, it is hardly a stretch to imagine Federer successfully defending his Australian Open title. |
