Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters

[C4iLL]

Sorauze is an official padawan of the C4iLL academy, it's not surprising he gave you a good opposition !

This match shows he still have to learn however, leading 4-1 and loosing 6-4, it's a pity. One day I think he was even leading 5-1 vs me with set points and I beat him 7-5 or 7-6

[Robbin92]

Robbin def. Pidzi 6-2 3-6 6-2

This was a strange match. Pidzi seemed a bit nervous in the beginning of the match and I was able to snatch an early break. Controlled the set from that moment and won the set quite simply. I broke him immediately in the second set, but my concentration slacked and the game after that was really bad from my side and he broke back. I played the whole first set focused to prevent him getting any rhytm or confidence, but because of this stupid game of me it happened. He started playing better and mix up things more to win 4 games in a row. He worked away one break point before finishing at 6-3. In the third set our levels were close to each other, but I was the first to break. This time I could work away his break points in the game after and took a 2-game lead. I decided to play with some more risk on his service which led to a second break and a 6-2 win in the first set. Overall it was a decent match from both sides, with ups and downs. He showed some great tennis at moment, but luckily I found a way to win it in the end. For my next round against Florian, I will have a chance for revanche but I will have to raise my level.

Some strange/fun stats:
Net points won of me. First set 6/8, second set 2/13, 8/12.
Points won at first service of me: 56%, points won at second service: 79%

[Clog]

Clog (Verdasco) def. Richie (Nadal) : 6/3 6/3

I barely don't know what to say. As some of you may know, I just went through a difficult period, I even thought about retiring. But I fought against myself, and finally decided to come back, to change a lot of things in my game, and I subscribed in Monte-Carlo. I almost cried when I saw the draw ( ), because meeting one of the current masters so soon was really hard for my lack of matches. But I made it. Since he had Nadal, I perfectly knew his player and what I had to do to win, and even if deep inside of me I believed I could win, it was like a huge challenge to me.

As I said in the post-match press conference, now I have to be very careful about this victory. Indeed, I still haven't won any title here, and it's still a handicap but also an aim. So yeah, I've beaten one of the best players of the moment, but it doesn't mean that I can easily beat all the others.
Now I have to prepare for a fight against VMoe. It will be very different compared to this match against Richie. I may have a slight advantage on the mental aspect since I lead 1-0 in our meetings, but I'm aware that it's gonna be a very different match compared to our semi-final in the Australian Open. Time will tell.

[Richie1308]

Clog (Verdasco) d Richie (Nadal) 6-3/6-3

Backhand. That's it, I've summed up very precisely what this match was made of. We absolutely had no weapon allowing us to go to the opponent's forehand and backhands were too weak to try anything. And with the stamina, we could not try many accelerations, so it was forbidden to attack. In the first set, we event got a 100+ point where absolutely nothing happened, fantastic !

At the beginning I could accept long points (after all with Nadal I expected that), but there was just no way to finish a point even on weak shots of the opponent and points were getting rididulously loooooooong, waiting for the stamina to be so low to wish the opponent would make a fault while aiming for the middle of the court.
And even avoiding my backhand to hit many forehand changed nothing to this fact : nothing to do. If I really wanted to continue playing like this, we would still be playing, doing Backhand/backhand points during all the match, great ! That's why I "gave up", just going for serve and volleys very often (44 points played at the net with Nadal on clay ).

Good luck for Clog for next, probably we will need to find a solution to prevent us from having to play like this, doing absolutely nothing except from "top spin/top spin/repeat endlessy until you die", as today Nadal cannot do anything else than this. And against a Verdasco or Almagro, it is just a painful match for both.

[C4iLL]

New surprise at Monte-Carlo with the elimination of Cerji 6-3 6-3 vs the big talent Vramvrim !
Hope to read a report soon about that match !

[Vramvrim]

New surprise at Monte-Carlo with the elimination of Cerji 6-3 6-3 vs the big talent Vramvrim !
Hope to read a report soon about that match !

Here

Vramvrim (Almagro) def. Cerji (Djokovic) 6-3 6-2



I went in the match pretty confident since it seemed like a good matchup for me. Also I just resolved a framerate problem I had for several weeks.
Thanks to having Almagro, I could play pretty secure and attack at the right time. I knew how difficult it is to deal with the lift on this game, so I just tried to stay focused and patient, mixing up with some volleys. I felt that he was not at his best, swinging his racket in the air sometimes. In the first set, I had 2 BPs at 2-1 which he saved with serve-and-volley, but I was not in danger on my serve and with one break at 4-3 I took the set.

Then the second set started with our stamina bars pretty low as expected. I relaxed a little too much and I had to face 2 BPs at 0-1. I managed to save them and to break at the next game. Then we had a very long and gruelling game on my serve (2-1), took 7 or 8 minutes I think. After facing another break point, I finally won my serve. Then he held and went at 0-30 on my serve again. I won the next 4 points to hold, and after that he was probably tired of this match, made some unforced errors, so I broke again and hold to finish this match with 12 consecutive points.

Happy about this win of course, but like I said he was not at his best I think, and it was "only" R16, so now I'll just focus on my next match.

[VMoe86]

Another deciding set loss: Clog (Verdasco) defeats VMoe86 (Haas), 6-3, 4-6, 6-2

First of all congrats to Clog: He eliminated Richie (or bored him into serve and volleying as Nadal ) and once again he prevailed in a great fight against me. I'm happy to have made a really good match (of course disappointed to have lost, but clay season isn't that long anymore ^^), except maybe the start into the match, where I should have done more and in the last set both of us couldn't do something interesting due to stamina.

Before the match, I was worried about his serve: He served at 75% 1st serves in, averaging 119mph on 1st Serve! Good luck breaking him, I thought. Then the match started, him serving, and he had a low 1st serve percentage at the beginning, but since I sarted slowly I could not take advantage of it and he held for 1-0. He broke for 2-0 and I thought "Here we go again, uphill battle!". I broke right back, but my serving was not great and he broke again for 3-1.

He consolidated the break, and broke again for a 5-1 lead, hitting nice winners with the Verdasco BH. He kind of forced to back off a bit and serving for the 1st set I broke him for 2-5. I held for 3-5, but couldn't prevent him serving it out in the end, but I was now in the match.

Rallies were getting longer, we neutralized each other, so I also took some more risks at the net (I've been 22 out 38 on Net Approaches for the whole matches, i.e. 58%, so I'm improving in that area ). In the 2nd set, I served first, we got to 2-1 and there we had a very long game, lots of deuce, advantage Clog, deuce, advantage Clog and so on. I played really well there, invested a lot and did not even see a break point! So, with low stamina, after he held, I had pressure again. Too much pressure, couldn't get easy points, made errors and he broke me (I think to love?).

So, there it was again, the uphill battle, not just a set, but also a break! He consolidated it immediately, but I was not going to let him win easily, I gave it all in this 2nd set: Holding for 3-4 and then we had a very long game, where we both drained our staminas and somehow I managed to break, him making an error with zero Instant Energy. I held for 5-4 and suddenly I could be back in this set and match! Another break sealed the deal, it was another deciding set for me.

I sensed that I could get him mentally, but then I looked at my stamina and thought "This is bad, isn't it?". The last four games in 2nd set, they took a lot out of Haas' stamina, Clog had a bit better stamina (one to two bars). So, I really tried to go for huge shots, but even when they went in, a good counter came back and volleying with low stamina was not the easiest. It turned into a stamina struggle, with not really much interesting points: We tried, but simply couldn't do more interesting. I made a few too many errors, going for big shots with zero or very low Instant Energy. Thus he got to a double break lead, 4-1. I broke again for 2-4, but he broke for 5-2 and served it out.

Good match, great fight and good luck in the SF!

Some stats:



Damn, I should have ONLY hit 2nd serves.

[inseedious]

R16: inseedious (Haas) def. Ugadalou (Ferrer) 6-1 6-3

A good performance by me and I'm happy to have beaten several top 10 players recently. I started focused and the first set was mine with no problems at all. In the second set he started to play a lot more defensively with very high top spins and it hurt a lot my game because he hit lots of deep counters landing on the baseline, maybe more than one every point. In fact, he led 3-0*, with me losing some focus, but then I came back mentally and the following 6 games were mine. Again, my opponent had a low succesful break points ratio, so I'm happy about how I'm defending my service games, despite "not awesome" Haas's serve.

[Florian]

r16 Florian (Djoko) def. Robbin (Verdasco) 6-3 6-2
Some cool points in that match indeed, but i'm pretty much surprised to see myself as a winner in straight sets especially against Verdasco in the hands of a very good player. Glitches annoyed both of us but it happened also during important moments on his serve so i got a bit lucky there. The big difference was the bp conversion, 4/5 for me and only 1/10 for him. Anyway I'm pretty satisfied with that match, looking forward to see if i can find a bit of my old level back soon because clay isn't my favourite and other big names are coming next rounds.
Good game still and definitely a very nice and fair player who i always enjoy to play with.

[Robbin92]

Totally agree. I couldn't find the sweetspot/timing on my backhand so gave Florian a lot of opportunities to take iniative which he did good. When I could attack my short accelarations weren't near the lines so easily reachable for a player with the defensive skills of Florian. Maybe I should have gone to the net more, but it is now too late for that.
Good luck in the rest of the tournament all!

[inseedious]

QF: Vramvrim (Almagro) def. inseedious (Haas) 6-1 6-1

No story. Maybe spinny players have some overall advantage vs all court players like Haas, but I felt like I had a big handicap vs him in this match. No tactic could turn the match on my side. His serve was clearly better than mine, always hitting lines with first serve (especially slice ones), his spin created both an offensive and defensive gap: he was able to hit deep baseline counters whenever he wanted, just killing my offensive game, but he also could hit heavier offensive shots, with his spin making wrong foot and cross shots very difficult to reach, impossible to counter. In the first games I took more initiatives and played at his same level, even having some opportunities, but however I lost the service also because I averagely lost 2-3 point every game because of deep counter. I had to face more than one 40+ shots rally to hope to win a game, so I went for a more offensive strategy, but his spin as always made my net play even worse. I'm sorry to have lost so badly, because it could be a tied match since our levels are not that different.

[C4iLL]

People forgot because he has been eliminated the round after, but Vramvrim eliminated me one day in an tournament by playing at a huge level (like Vlad did at Shanghai). I think it's possible he's very irregular from a match to another, it's perhaps not only the character and his spin. Or he just explodes at Monaco

[Elias]

Indeed, Vramvrim is contantly sparring with Richie. He defeated Cerji in R16, played a 3 setter against Richie @ Miami, defeated Vlad in straight sets only leaving 2 games @ BRD Nastase, i wouldn't underestimate his level, he's actually an extremely solid player.

[Richie1308]

From all the matches I have done with him, I can say that Vram is at least as good as I am, until now he got some bad draws in major tournaments that didnt help him. That´s why I am not surprised to see him at this stage. He definitely can win this tournament, but there are big competitors still there among kyuuji, florian, c4ill, butcher and clog. Anyway, The French Connection is here, Butcher is the only one that can prevent France from winning here..

[VMoe86]

Everyone can see that in exhibitions Vramvrim can take sets off Richie (and only few can do it!). Maybe Richie is better at handling tournament match pressure than him, but on technical skill there does not seem to be a difference. I find it a tad bit disrespectful to say "It was just about the Spin, otherwise there was no difference between us!". If I were convinced of such claims, I'd simply ask for some exhibitions, testing Haas vs. Haas, Almagro vs. Almagro, Haas vs. Almagro. What would the result be?