ATP 500/250: Washington DC, Kitzbuhel

Last of the little weeks...
We say goodbye to clay in 2014 in Kitzbuhel and move on to hard courts for the rest of the season.

ATP 250 Kitzbuhel, outdoor clay
ATP World Tour tennis returned to Kitzbuhel in 2011 after a one-year absence, with Robin Haase excelling to win his first ATP World Tour title before repeating the success in 2012. The event has been dominated by South Americans in recent years, with Argentines Juan Martin del Potro, Juan Monaco, Agustin Calleri, Gaston Gaudio and Guillermo Coria, and Chilean Nicolas Massu all triumphing between 2003-2008.

Players:
Kohlschreiber, Rosol, Brown, Thiem, Sousa, Seppi, Granollers, Vesely
Draw:
http://www.atpworldtour.com/posting/2014/319/mds.pdf
Order of Play:
http://www.atpworldtour.com/posting/2014/319/op.pdf



ATP 500 Washington DC, outdoor hard
The Citi Open at the William H.G. Fitzgerald Tennis Center in Rock Creek Park is one of only eleven prestigious ATP World Tour 500 tournaments worldwide. Recognised as one of the top 20 events on the ATP World Tour and a member of the Emirates Airline US Open Series, the tournament offers more than $1.2 million in total financial commitment.

Players:
Berdych, Raonic, Dimitrov, Nishikori, Gasquet, Chardy, Isner, F. Lopez, Paire, Stepanek, Tomic
Draw:
http://www.atpworldtour.com/posting/2014/418/mds.pdf
Order of Play:
http://www.atpworldtour.com/posting/2014/418/op.pdf

Thanks NITB for keeping this forum going. I have been away this week...and next and have no time to dedicate.....not even read articles nowadays.

I guess most of the top players are on vacation too.

He,he...you sure know which weeks to pick you holidays in, hope you are having a grand time!
I am seriously going to consult ATP calendar before I book mine for next year   
At least the weather here has been fantastic, real summer!


Match of the day:

Paire-Dancevic

Dimitrov withdraws from the tournament.

A video from Washington's players' party, I must say, Berd and his beautiful girlfriend stand out as a great looking couple!

Match if the day:

Paire-Karlovic

noleisthebest wrote:Match if the day:

Paire-Karlovic

Paire lost in 3 tie-breaks.  ........

Match of the day:

Thiem-Vesely

also interesting:

Sela-Gasquet
Kohlschreiber-Goffin
Raonic-Sock
Nishikori-Querrey

I just saw a bit of Nishi-Querrey.
So glad he's back.
I missed that effortless ball-striking. His FH was superb!

Just happy for Vasek Pospisil, who blew Tomas Berdych off 6:2 and 6:4 in Washington. Vasek is finally back   

Yes, I was surprised by that score.

Berd seems to have plateaued with his game and hungry, young players are getting closer and closer.

Pospisil is a very nice guy and an excellent competitor. He's got a good modern game but no distinct weapon.

Wimbledon doubles win seems to have given him wings.

Match of the day:

Nishikori-Gasquet

Gasquet leads 4:0 in their H2H.

Goffin through to the final, he has been on an amazing tear recently! Allez! Could go into the top 50 if he wins it

Yes, I saw that...he disappeared after last year's RG. He played a very good match against Nole there in the first round. Was he injured?


Thiem seems to be finding ways to win these days which is good.
I like his drive.

Goffin wins in 3! 20 WINS IN A ROW!

Rooting completely for Vasek Pospisil.


 Raonic is good, but Pospisil has much more likable all-court game.

6-1 6-4 win for Raonic.

luvsports! wrote:6-1 6-4 win for Raonic.

Having watched most of that match, I must say that Milos became a monster player on fast surfaces. His serve is a dynamite, even on his 2nd serve Vasek Pospisil practically didn't get any chance even he tried to do everything on his return. Vasek changed each possible position on the return, he even stood on a couple serve about 6-7m behind the BL and changed the side during Milos's ball toss, but Milos looked very cool and kept his focus till the end.

Milos played for 2-3 strokes and hitted as hard as he could. His move is just quick for these 2-3 strokes, then he gradually stops catching the ball and slows down. But to return the serve and withstand 2-3 dynamites from FH is quite something. His forehand is a killer, so only chance how to keep Milos in the game is to play spinny balls into his backhand.

Not nice to watch his matches, but Milos will go up at the ranking for sure. He is literally a monstrous player.

paulcz wrote:Not nice to watch his matches, but Milos will go up at the ranking for sure. He is literally a monstrous player.

Yes...said so a long time ago....even if not a fan of the guy.

Yes, Raonic is plodding his way upwards slowly but surely.

True, not easy to withstand his serve and those first 1-2 FHs, but talented players seem to be doing it with ease (Fed, Dolgo).

I quite liked this write-up on him from S. Tignor:

" I think the number I have beside my name is not a coincidence, and I don’t think it would be a coincidence if it got lower.”

Those confident words were uttered on Sunday by Milos Raonic, who, at 23, has reached a career-high No. 6 in the world, and isn’t afraid to say he deserves to be there. By tennis’s polite standards, he sounded like a pro wrestler bellowing about his god-like status. Which was a bit surprising, considering that Raonic’s title in Washington, D.C., this weekend was his first in 11 months, and the first to come at a tournament larger than a 250, the lowest rung on tour.
Were his big words justified? On the one hand, Raonic’s recent results are the best he's ever had. After four years of ups and downs, starts and stops, he has begun to make himself into a reliable winner. He reached the quarters and semis of the last two majors, before losing to Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer. He followed that up by beating the players he was supposed to beat in D.C., without dropping a set to any of them. And as far as his ranking going “lower,” Raonic is probably just stating the obvious. He’s only 35 points behind No. 5 Tomas Berdych, who has been in decline of late.

Just as much as his results, what gives Raonic confidence is the fact that he feels like his game is on track, and that he's doing the right things to get better with coaches Ivan Ljubicic and Ricardo Piatti—he hasn't always felt that way. Last week, it was apparent that Raonic’s consistency, movement, and return—all three of them are weak points—had improved. Even his serve, already among the best in the game, was better. For the tournament, he won 52 of 53 service games, and 88 percent of first-serve points. You don’t have to do much else if you can serve like that.

Raonic has always been a process-oriented guy, someone who, whatever his results were at any given moment, hasn't lost his belief in what he can do in the long run. Much like his hero Pete Sampras, Raonic’s core of confidence can be traced back to his serve; he knows that this shot alone makes him difficult for any player to beat. Last year Federer chose Raonic as his most-likely-to-succeed among the next generation partly because Milos was the most organized and forward-thinking of them. Along with his two coaches, Raonic has had a personal PR flack for a couple of years now. That organization, that methodical dedication to moving forward and improving, has begun to pay dividends. As you can see by his words above, Raonic is more self-assured and ambitious than his robotically even-keel demeanor on court might lead you to believe. While that ambition is not necessarily endearing, it’s a useful quality to have.

But not all has gone according to plan. Along with his confident predictions for the future, last week Raonic expressed regret over how poorly he played in his Wimbledon semifinal loss to Federer. Raonic likely realized that what he hasn’t done so far is the one thing that many fans are waiting him for him to do—beat one of the Big Four on a big stage. At the majors, he has played Federer twice, Djokovic once, and Murray once, and has lost all 12 sets. And he has yet to win a Masters title.

As important as Raonic’s serve is, and as important as that shot remains in tennis, few ace machines have won major titles. The last one to win a Slam was Andy Roddick at the U.S. Open in 2003. And only one player who is taller than Raonic has ever won a major; Juan Martin del Potro, the 2009 Open champ, is 6’6”, Raonic is 6’5”. The Argentine is also a much more natural, all-around player than the Canadian.

Raonic’s ranking, as he says, will likely get lower, but will it get as low as he likes to think in the foreseeable future? He’s only four spots behind Rafael Nadal, and five spots behind Novak Djokovic, but that’s a difference of 8,000 ranking points. And while Raonic may seem to have time on his side, he's just four years younger than Djokovic, and five years younger than Nadal. Raonic has done a lot in the last couple of months, but he has a long way to go before he makes the achievement gap with Rafa and Nole as narrow as the age gap. "

You can't fault him for what he has done and the way he plays, he's making the most of what he's got, just a bit too "robotic" and falsely smug in his demeanour.
Underneath that facade he's a big mummy's boy which is why he crumbles under pressure.
I even prefer watching Isner to him.

luvsports! wrote:Goffin wins in 3! 20 WINS IN A ROW!

Yes, really happy for him, hope he can keep it together without getting injured. His ball-striking is so light and sweet, but from memory too baseline-bound, a bit like Mannarino. Too costly to play like that in this brutal physical era, unfortunately.

noleisthebest wrote:Yes, Raonic is plodding his way upwards slowly but surely.

True, not easy to withstand his serve and those first 1-2 FHs, but talented players seem to be doing it with ease (Fed, Dolgo).


You can't fault him for what he has done and the way he plays, he's making the most of what he's got, just a bit too "robotic" and falsely smug in his demeanour.
Underneath that facade he's a big mummy's boy which is why he crumbles under pressure.
[b]I even prefer watching Isner to him.

Hi Nitb, really nice article from Tignor, quite truthful and well-written, but I very appreciate and like your comments, which I absolutely agree with.

Milos is a kind a special player, a gigantic robot, ten times more robotish than Berd. That is the fact and true tennis fans will never like his game.
I tend to say that his real breakthrough will come with his big win over TOP 3 players, but I am also convinced that he will never be a consistent top player, meaning to be a  TOP3 player. His huge body shell and relying just on serve is too fragile combination to be at the top of the most complex game, which tennis surely is.

I can imagine that Milos will succeed on fast hard courts at US open. He will be the player, that everybody will want to avoid to meet. When he leads in the set, he can just take a big risk on return (to play for a full risk, max. 1-2 strokes) and just focus on his serve. It is just enough. I also think that after a big win his confidence will climb up. Everything he does on the court makes sense and is bound to a right tactics. Brilliant job from Ivo L.

Yes, tennis truly is a complex game and the nice thing about it is you can see how each player falls short of its imaginary perfection.

It's such a tough and tall mountain to climb and challenges body, mind, emotions and spirit like no other sport. It's so high above them all.

I love watching players mature over the years both in skill and character.

Even Raonic has changed so much over the last 3-4 years. He is not the most talented of his generation, but his calm and rational, hard-working mindset of a "diligent pupil" has paid off as it always does in life.

Not easy to like but definitely interesting as another character in top 10.

Tenez and you seem to suggest he will gain confidence and become unstoppable when he beats top players, but I am not so sure.

I really think his inner make-up is his Achilles heel. Just not enough game to be relaxed on that baseline as other players are catching up both in height and rallying skill.

But maybe you'll be right. If Nadal's one-trick game designed by Toni won him all those slams (is it 14 or 15 now?), why not Raonic...maybe he won't ever even need to be loose and relaxed...(which I don't think he can anyway).

Of these youngsters I really like Kyrgios, I wish he had Raonic's work attitude.
He's a bit like Tomic in skill (plenty of easy power, but better serve which is his weapon) and Monfils in charisma, showmanship and athleticism,  and most importantly he likes to go for his shots all the time, but not at all cost. Only 19!
Very promising combination.

noleisthebest wrote:Tenez and you seem to suggest he will gain confidence and become unstoppable when he beats top players, but I am not so sure.

I really think his inner make-up is his Achilles heel. Just not enough game to be relaxed on that baseline as other players are catching up both in height and rallying skill.
.

I agree with this....and I actually think it will cost him a few slams....but he might win a few too (3/4?)

wrong thread,.