I just caught the end of a most amazing tennis match on espn2 - a young, unseeded player from France upset the #2 player in the world, Rafael Nadal...This French player is AWEsome and may face Roger Federer in the finals of the Australian Open this weekend -- make some time to watch it...fyi...
Unseeded Frenchman Derails Nadal
By CHRISTOPHER CLAREY
The New York Times
January 25, 2008
MELBOURNE — As the acrobatic drop volleys, huge forehands and first serves kept turning into winners, Rafael Nadal puffed out his cheeks and raised his eyebrows. Surely, it was just a matter of time before Jo-Wilfried Tsonga started playing like a young man in his first Grand Slam semifinal. Surely it was just a matter of time before the racket started feeling strangely heavy in his hand and the balls started flying to blue-painted places beyond the baseline.
Sadly for Nadal, and gladly for Tsonga and for all those who enjoy a fresh face and a truly major upset, it never happened.
Playing as if this were the first round in Marseille instead of the biggest match of his life in Melbourne, Tsonga coolly, beautifully kept the pressure on Nadal in the forecourt and the backcourt to reach the final of the Australian Open.
He used his speed to track down the ripped topspin forehands that usually leave most of Nadal’s opponents lunging and vulnerable. He used his deft volleying touch to pick off the increasingly desperate bolts that the second-seeded Spaniard kept hurling at him, winning 75 percent of the points at net against a man whose defensive skills are arguably the best in the sport.
It was, in both senses of the word, stunning. And yet Tsonga, the 22-year-old Frenchman who looks like a young Muhammad Ali but plays quite like himself, did not look stunned in the least until the moment after he calmly finished off his 6-2, 6-3, 6-2 victory with his 17th ace.
“For most of the match, I truly felt like I couldn’t miss,” said Tsonga, who finished with 49 winners to 27 unforced errors. “The thing that’s the most incredible is to play a match of this quality at this kind of moment. I didn’t expect it. I thought it would be a really tough match against a player who gets everything back and who grinds you down with his style of play. It’s hard to beat him, because it’s hard to get it past him. But I felt today I had the potential to do it on almost every shot.”
Fifth-seeded Maria Sharapova has been dictating her terms in the women’s tournament, too, and she reached her second straight final here with a 6-3, 6-1 victory over the third-seeded Jelena Jankovic, her ailing, overmatched Serbian opponent. But the Serbians still got to celebrate, because fourth-seeded Ana Ivanovic managed to recover from the loss of the first eight games to defeat No. 9 Daniela Hantuchova of the Slovak Republic in the second semifinal by 0-6, 6-3, 6-4.
Sharapova and Ivanovic, both tall, telegenic and 20 years old, will face each other in Saturday’s final, which will be Ivanovic’s first in Melbourne.
“She’s definitely a big fighter, and she never gives up, and that’s something I also feel we have a little bit in common,” Ivanovic said of Sharapova, with whom she has split their four previous matches. “It’s going to be a big battle, I think.”
Tsonga, ranked 38th but not for long, won’t play his first Grand Slam final until Sunday. And he won’t know the identity of his opponent until Friday night, when the No. 1 seed and three-time champion Roger Federer of Switzerland plays against No. 3 Novak Djokovic, also of Serbia.
How might Tsonga handle the final when it comes? “He is truly convinced that when he goes on the court, he can beat anybody in the world,” said his coach, Eric Winogradsky.
Like the unseeded Marcos Baghdatis in 2006, Tsonga has used the Australian Open as a springboard to tennis stardom by beating a string of top 10 players. But Baghdatis, the bearded Cypriot who, it should be noted, finished just ahead of Tsonga in the 2003 world junior rankings, typically needed five sets and late nights to polish off his upsets.
The most impressive part of Tsonga’s career-altering run has been the apparent ease with which he has rumbled through the draw, showing no stage fright, no mercy and an intimidating blend of offense and defense that just might turn into a new paradigm if he can sustain it.
“I wasn’t expecting this kind of level, even from Federer,” said Nadal, who had not lost a set here in his first five rounds. “I couldn’t get in the match. He wasn’t giving me time. It was all bing, bang, boom.”
Tsonga, the son of a former Congolese team handball player and a French mother, has yet to be pushed to five sets by anyone in Melbourne. Not by the ninth-seeded Andy Murray of Britain in the first round. Not by the eighth-seeded Richard Gasquet in the fourth round. Not by the 14th-seeded Mikhail Youzhny in the quarterfinals and certainly not by Nadal, who could never find a way to break the Frenchman’s serve.
“It’s never gonna be a surprise again, he’s that good a player,” said former Australian Open champion Mats Wilander of Tsonga’s series of upsets. “He’s the most exciting player since Federer.”
It is easy to succumb to hyperbole when a young talent manages to avoid the usual snares at a Grand Slam and bursts into the open. So it would certainly be wise to wait and see how Tsonga handles the next 72 hours and, more important, how he digests his Australian breakthrough in the months and tournaments to come.
“He’s playing with zero pressure, everything is going good for him,” Nadal said. “When you are playing like this, every ball is going to the line. Is not the real level, I think. Sure he can play like this but not every week. It’s impossible, no?”
Sharapova’s level has been remarkably high in Melbourne, too. Jankovic was already vulnerable during the rallies on Thursday but eventually found herself lying face down on a towel, too, as she received treatment on her lower back.
Such a situation might not have been hopeless against last year’s Sharapova, the one who was fiddling with her service motion because of shoulder pain and doubting the accuracy of her groundstrokes under pressure. But this year’s Sharapova is swinging freely and effectively.
She led 5-0 after just 22 minutes, although Jankovic then managed to save five set points before Sharapova closed out the opening set. The Russian with an American accent and address also took a 4-0 lead in the second set, continuing to dominate before and after Jankovic left the court for several minutes for treatment for what tournament doctors said was a strained back.
The Serb, normally quick with a smile and resistant to pain, was in tears as she sat on her chair during a changeover, trailing by 1-4. And she was still crying as she walked out to return Sharapova’s serve, which is hard enough to read these days when one is seeing clearly.
It was a downbeat end to an upbeat tournament for Jankovic, who had fought through minor physical problems, saved three match points in the first round and later eliminated the defending champion Serena Williams in the quarterfinals.
But her first Australian Open semifinal was a round too far. Jankovic said she should not have played doubles here and would have retired from Thursday’s match if it had not been a Grand Slam semifinal. She also said that she became concerned that she might have taken too much pain-killing medication before and during play. Sharapova has already won Grand Slam singles titles at Wimbledon in 2004 and the United States Open in 2006. After a disappointing year by her standards, she now is a favorite to win another. But Sharapova still sounded wary, too well aware that she was also the favorite last year against Williams in the final and ended up winning just three games.
“You have your bad moments in your career, and you have your good moments, and it’s been a good ride so far, but it’s not over yet,” she said.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company |
