{"id":199,"date":"2011-03-30T12:57:02","date_gmt":"2011-03-30T12:57:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heavytopspin.com\/?p=199"},"modified":"2011-03-30T12:57:02","modified_gmt":"2011-03-30T12:57:02","slug":"wednesday-topspin-cruise-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/30\/wednesday-topspin-cruise-control\/","title":{"rendered":"Wednesday Topspin: Cruise Control"},"content":{"rendered":"

Domination: <\/em>The top four remaining seeds at Miami–Rafael Nadal<\/strong>, Novak Djokovic<\/strong>, Roger Federer<\/strong>, and David Ferrer<\/strong>–had an easy time of it yesterday. \u00a0None had to face a fellow member of the top 20; Nadal was the only one of the four who played a seed.<\/p>\n

Amazingly, Djokovic dropped the most games. \u00a0Playing his friend Viktor Troicki<\/strong>, Novak’s \u00a06-0 6-1 victim at Indian Wells, he lost five games, coming through 6-3 6-2. \u00a0Olivier Rochus<\/strong> took four games from Federer, while Nadal and Ferrer both got past their opponents with a score of 6-1 6-2.<\/p>\n

Squeakers: <\/em>Tomas Berdych<\/strong>, the next seed in line, also drew an unseeded opponent: Florian Mayer<\/strong>. \u00a0But the Czech’s route to the quarters was not nearly so easy. \u00a0He breezed through the first set, winning 6-3, before the rain halted play. \u00a0Back on court, Berdych suddenly couldn’t land a first serve, making only 42% in the second set. \u00a0Mayer capitalized, evening the tally, then neither player took command en route to a third-set tiebreak.<\/p>\n

Mayer played some excellent tennis at times, and he had his chances–Berdych double faulted five times in the final set, yet never allowed even a break point. \u00a0Berdych makes it look so easy, and the German just didn’t have the weaponry to hold him off.<\/p>\n

Every bit as tight was yesterday’s first match, between Mardy Fish<\/strong> and Juan Martin del Potro<\/strong>. \u00a0Neither player was at their best; it seemed that Delpo had a tough time getting in a rhythm against Fish’s less-than-elite groundstrokes. \u00a0Ultimately, it took two very long sets, in which Fish triumphed, 7-5 7-6(5). \u00a0That puts Fish one match away from becoming the top-ranked American. \u00a0He’ll have to beat Ferrer to do so.<\/p>\n

Quarters: <\/em>We’re left with eight men to decide among. \u00a0The first two quarterfinal contests are scheduled for today; the first is Fish-Ferrer, and the night match is between Djokovic and Kevin Anderson<\/strong>, who got past John Isner<\/strong> in straight sets yesterday.\u00a0Tomorrow, Federer faces Gilles Simon<\/strong>, and Nadal plays Berdych.<\/p>\n

Fish-Ferrer may be the only pairing in the quarters that makes for a close match. \u00a0Oddsmakers certainly think so: They give Mardy a 36% chance of reaching the semis, while the other three matches are at least 85\/15 splits.<\/p>\n

Challengers: <\/em>It’s already a bizarre week in Barletta, a clay-court challenger with the strongest field of the three events this week at that level. \u00a0Of the top six seeds, only one–third seed Filippo Volandri<\/strong>–survived to the second round. \u00a0Fabio Fognini<\/strong> and Pere Riba<\/strong>, the two top seeds, both lost three-setters.<\/p>\n

An equally notable but less surprising loser is 43-year-old former #1 Thomas Muster<\/strong>, who fell to Martin Fischer<\/strong> today, 6-0 6-3.<\/p>\n

Another strong field is contesting the challenger in Barranquilla, Colombia, another clay court event, where the top seeds are Teymuraz Gabashvili<\/strong> and Horacio Zeballos<\/strong>. \u00a0The draw looks a lot like many of the other South American events of the last couple months, with one exception: Wayne Odesnik<\/strong> came through qualifying for a spot in the main draw.<\/p>\n

This is Odesnik’s first challenger-level event since his drug suspension. \u00a0The qualifying draw was reasonably competitive, as he had to beat three top-500 players, including Marcel Felder<\/strong>. \u00a0His first-round opponent is Juan Pablo Brzezicki<\/strong>, the first top-200 guy he’s faced since Houston, almost exactly one year ago.<\/p>\n

See you tomorrow!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Domination: The top four remaining seeds at Miami–Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, and David Ferrer–had an easy time of it yesterday. \u00a0None had to face a fellow member of the top 20; Nadal was the only one of the four who played a seed. Amazingly, Djokovic dropped the most games. \u00a0Playing his friend Viktor … Continue reading Wednesday Topspin: Cruise Control<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,24,71],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-challengers","category-daily-recaps","category-miami"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}