Past his prime? It has been a dreadful year for Fernando Verdasco. He went to Australia ranked #9; now he’s #17. With the exception of a run to the finals in Estoril last week, he hasn’t won a single match on tour since San Jose in February. Even last week’s performance was unimpressive–one of his three wins was by retirement over Milos Raonic, and another required three sets over Kevin Anderson.
This year, he’s lost to the likes of Benjamin Becker, Pablo Andujar (on a hard court!), Sam Querrey, and yesterday, Yen-Hsun Lu, which suggests his free fall isn’t over yet. At least yesterday’s 7-6 7-5 loss was a close one.
Lower standards: I suppose it could be worse for Verdasco–he could be coming back from injury, playing a challenger somewhere. That’s what both James Blake and Fernando Gonzalez are doing this week. Blake is charging through the U.S. challenger circuit with two finals in as many weeks, and is into the second round in Savannah. His ranking this week rose to #109, so another strong effort will set him up to make the Wimbledon cut.
Gonzalez is playing in Prague, where he’ll start his tournament tomorrow against Jaroslav Pospisil. If he wins, he’ll face top seed Jeremy Chardy, which should be an interesting test of Freddy’s fitness at this stage of his comeback.
Tiebreak madness: A day after John Isner defeated Mardy Fish in a third-set tiebreak, the tables were turned. Sergiy Stakhovsky came up with a clutch performance to down Isner in yet another third-set breaker. The Ukrainian was just a little better in every category, winning 72% of service points and 32% of return points to Isner’s 68% and 28%.
Speaking of breakers, Rick Devereaux took a look at tiebreak winning percentage with a leaderboard. He hints at a question that may prove difficult to solve: Are great players successful because they can perform in the clutch and win tiebreaks, or do they win tiebreaks simply because they are better than their opponents?
Faceoffs: Despite the early losses of Verdasco, Nicholas Almagro, and Gael Monfils, the Madrid draw is set to generate some big-time matchups. An early highlight will be a round-of-16 contest between Rafael Nadal and Juan Martin del Potro, assuming both get that far. Delpo, for his part, must defeat Marin Cilic today.
A thriller could come even sooner in the other half of the draw, with a second-rounder on today’s schedule between Gilles Simon and Andy Murray. Simon won a squeaker against Ivan Ljubicic yesterday, and showed the skills to threaten Murray in Monte Carlo before suffering an injury.
Also interesting is the potential of the bottommost quarter. As I write, Novak Djokovic is working his way past Anderson; next he’ll push aside Guillermo Garcia-Lopez. But his projected quarterfinal opponent is a different story. David Ferrer has been the second-best player on clay this year, and that match should be an early test of whether Djokovic can be a major factor on clay this year.