French Open Day 6: German Wunderkind, or the ATP’s Elina Svitolina?

Hi All. Galileo here.

The lack of upsets in the men’s game has been rather suspicious. Day 6 rectified that a little bit.

Of course in the women’s game it has been business as usual. All of you who had Caroline Wozniacki losing early and Elina Svitolina winning do a forfeit. For falling into the same old WTA trap. This BACKSPINNER has already done his for picking last year’s champion to repeat. I may be throwing glass stones in my glass house but nobody would be foolish enough to pick Svitolina to win here AND that the Woz would go out early. Would they?

But this BACKSPINNER is not here to talk about the WTA. In the doubles the 1st, 3rd and 5th seeds all won without dropping a set. The men’s doubles at Roland Garros is one of the most notorious upset events. But there haven’t been any. Well no big ones. The top eight seeds of any given big doubles event you can usually count on to do well. Anybody seeded lower is a total lottery. The 7th seeds Qureshi/Rojer lost in the first round. The rest of the top eight have played a combined 12 matches and lost just a single set. The other three seeds left, 10,12 and 13, have not dropped any sets in two matches. And since when did we have 10 of our 16 seeds by round three? What kind of witchcraft is going on here? Last year all four top seeds were gone by round two. Five of the 16 seeds hit their seeding. The 16th seeds did the best by making the semi-finals. The year before the seeds did a bit better but the top four were still all out by round three.
This year is an anomaly and is rather a nice change.

Marco Cecchinato has scored the second big upset of the men’s tournament. And so far it is the biggest. Pablo Carrena Busta was up 6-2 and a break. He was cruising and the suicide pick was still alive. It was looking healthy. And then he lost serve. The Italian only had one break point the entire set but he took it. Busta only had two. He only managed to win one. The Spaniard lost that set 7-5 in the tiebreaker. After that he crumbled like the Toronto Raptors in the postseason [on that note, J.R Smith is an idiot] and lost the next two sets 6-3, 6-1. There was a spot in the fourth round with a winnable matchup on the line. And he blew it!

*SUICIDE POOL PICS*
MS 1st Rd: Djokovic [20] d. [q] Dutra Silva {W}
MS 2nd Rd: Gasquet [27] d. Jaziri {W}
MS 3rd Rd: Carreno Busta [10] d. Cecchinato {L}
==
WS 1st Rd: Bertens [18] d. Sabalenka {W}
WS 2nd Rd: Keys [13] d. [Q] Dolehide {W}
WS 3rd Rd: Wozniacki [2] d. Parmentier [WC] {W}

CHATRIER: ZVEREV D. DZUMHUR
…As was repeated frequently during the match, Alex Zverev has never beaten a top 50 player at a slam. It was like that great responsibility line from Spider-man. Well he has finally done it. He has beaten someone inside the top 50. Only just. And he was very lucky. But it still counts. The German wunderkind, or the ATP’s Elina Svitolina, won the first set 6-2 and looked very good. But Damir Dzumhur came back and took the next two sets 6-3, 6-4. Aided by gutsy play and a lot of dropshots he was running Zverev ragged. In the fourth the German served down 4-4, 0-40 but stole the set. He should have lost that set. In the fifth he got up a break. At 2-4 Dzumhur held at love and then broke the German’s serve. He made it three games in a row when he took a 5-4 lead. A seven minute service game ensued, which yielded a match point for Dzumhur. But he could not capitalise. After missing the match point he never got another game. There were 17 breaks in the match. While both guys hit 51 winners, Zverev hit 73 errors. This was an entertaining, tight and very scratchy match.
In a Herculean effort the German has broken his duck. He should now turn it on and come out firing for the rest of the slam. He will play either Karen Khachanov or Lucas Pouille next. Let us see if this is a turning point or not. Perhaps Zverev may take even longer than we ever could have anticipated to figure out how slams work.

MVP of the day: This ballkid.

Recovery game strong ??#RG18 pic.twitter.com/4gG1UU38Ao

— Tennis Channel (@TennisChannel) June 2, 2018

CHATRIER: DJOKOVIC D. BAUTISTA AGUT
...Novak Djokovic dug out an incredibly tight match in almost four hours. He won the first set 6-4. But he couldn’t quite close out the next one. It went to a breaker and at 6-6 he missed a routine forehand and smashed his racket. Roberto Bautista Agut calmly closed it out. The Spaniard kept coming in the next set. Then, at 3-4 in the third, he got his chance. He got up 0-40. He got the break with a huge backhand return that he nailed down the line. If he had served it out properly he might well have won. But he didn’t even get a set point on his own serve. At 4-5 30 all there was a 31-shot rally won by Djokovic after the Spaniard put an easy passing shot right on Nole’s racket. The whole match Agut kept bringing Djokovic forward only to hit the ball right to him. He needed more killer instinct. Djokovic got up early in the breaker. A dead net cord gave him a 6-2 advantage. Agut got back to 4-6 but could not hold on in a lengthy rally on set point. Once the Djoker won that set it was easy. He rode his luck a bit but he does seem to be back. The Serb’s 51-43 winner ratio was superb. The key. though? Nole won 45 per cent of return points. That is nine more than his opponent. He edges through to face Verdasco. Right now this BACKSPINNER’S money is on the Spaniard.

COURT ONE: THIEM D. BERRETTINI
...Here we have another talented young Italian. Matteo Berrettini is 22 years old and is just inside the top 100. He was world number 96 before the tournament and he is now world number 79. That ranking will get you into pretty much every tournament. If he can get to 60 in the world then there won’t be any tournament he couldn’t get into automatically. He even acquitted himself well in defeat. Dominic Thiem was pushed by the Italian but won 6-3, 6-7[5], 6-3, 6-2. Faced with the big-time experience and heavy shots of the Austrian he was eventually worn down. He was an awesome 39-36 on W/UE. Thiem was a woeful 31-40. The Austrian broke six times and won 52 per cent of Berrettini’s second serve points. Still the youngster has some nice weapons and we can already see that Italy has produced another talented dirtballer. He gets to leave with 130,000 Euros, which is not bad at all. Thiem moves on to play Kei Nishikori. Nishikori blasted Simon 6-1, 6-3, 6-1 in the third round. Their clash will be fascinating. The winner will probably play Alex Zverev in the quarters. It is a golden opportunity for both men to make a slam final. Will Thiem regret playing before the slam?

COURT ONE: VERDASCO D. DIMITROV
...It only took two hours and 20 minutes to kill off Grigor Dimitrov’s dreams. The Bulgarian was put to the sword in a 7-6[4], 6-2, 6-4 loss. Ever since surviving a five set epic in round one, Fernando Verdasco has looked incredible. His forehand has been on song. This is his seventh foray into the fourth round here. He’s made it there from 2007-10, 2014 and 2017-18. He seems destined to make the semi-finals at least once. He was a very pedestrian 21-31 on the winners ratio, with Dimitrov a better 34-44. It was a reasonably tight match with a lot of grueling rallies. The Bulgarian has used up so much of his grit against Jared Donaldson in the last round he didn’t have much left here. Still, at least we have our first big upset. There is a hole in the draw now, which is excellent news for Djokovic. He plays Verdasco. If you go by seedings the winner would get either David Goffin or Gael Monfils in the quarters and a very wobbly Zverev in the semi-finals. Verdasco playing against Djokovic will be a tough match for the tired looking Serb. Verdasco will either implode or muscle the former champion off the court.



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