Apia International Sydney

[C4iLL]

R16 C4iLL (Gasquet) vs Tdbchess (Djokovic) = 3-6, 6-2, 6-4

After several days without touching the game, I was not in good condition today, missing a lot the ball, doing a lot of faults.... And in the opposite side of the court, Tdbchess was very confident, great anticipation, and good shots.
I honestly think he deserved to win the match in fact, I just won with experience and mental ^^

First set : I made a lot of faults and he logically won it by playing a very good tennis.
Second set : I increased a bit the level and it was sufficient as his level decreased.
Third set : He led 3-1, he dominated me on the baseline and was always on the ball... So I told myself "you can't loose that !", and just get back with mental, tactic and patience.

I finally get back to 3-3, break him another time, and conclude the match. Congratulations to him anyway, I really think he has the potential to become a top player. Maybe finalist of the US Open who knows

[C4iLL]

SF lost 6-1 6-1 vs Felipe.

The two sets were the same : I was enable to put a volley in the court due to the high sensibility created by the ping.
As I often go to the net, that resulted in a lot of faults on points I usually win, and then a lot of breaks

On baseline, we were approximately at the same level, but Djokovic just catch everything. Even when you hit three balls on the two lines, he's fast enough (or gasquet is too less powerful) to always bring back the ball on the court with dangerous shots. It's then almost impossible to hit a winner in this matchup against a good player...

Congratulations anyway, Felipe is good

[inseedious]

SF lost 6-1 6-1 vs Felipe.

The two sets were the same : I was enable to put a volley in the court due to the high sensibility created by the ping.
As I often go to the net, that resulted in a lot of faults on points I usually win, and then a lot of breaks

On baseline, we were approximately at the same level, but Djokovic just catch everything. Even when you hit three balls on the two lines, he's fast enough (or gasquet is too less powerful) to always bring back the ball on the court with dangerous shots. It's then almost impossible to hit a winner in this matchup against a good player...

Congratulations anyway, Felipe is good

I had the same feelings playing vs felipe, it's like playing another game to me. I really can't manage latency as i like to play a very fluid game. I really have nothing to complain about felipe's gamestyle, but i think that at least one server (to host a maximum of 30-35 matches...) must be installed by managames, because it's a bit annoying playing vs a player who is very far from you and/or has a bad connection and seeing that he's very advantaged by this just because he's used to the lag and can manage it in a better way. This is an exploitable situation, because even an optic fiber internet user can intentionally generate high latency for hidden scopes. I congratulate felipe for his superbe gaming, but i have to admit that playing a laggy TE is just not playing TE to me...

[Algo4]

Not this discussion again...

As long as ISP's keeps thinking of us as third world and scam us with really overpriced crappy connections (I for instance pay nearly 100 dollars for 10mb, that turns into barely 5 on wifi) this will always be an issue, add distance to the equation and you get this result.
I mean, it's ridiculous to have 200ms with Argentinian (border country for me) people, that's more than I have with Americans

[VMoe86]

Personally, I haven't had problems with any of the South Americans I've played with on the tour (spencercarlos, Michael.D and Algo). Against Algo I did not knew how to set Delay manually, so it was just a 250ms Auto Delay match dominated by serve (and awful returns from both). When I see Felipe hosting a match it falls into the same stable category of connection (220ms to 240ms ping, so one can set Delay to 167ms or 184ms), so I don't see what that fuss is all about -- some Europeans (for example from France) have unstable connections with ping varying from 150ms to 300ms when I see them hosting the match (while my ping to MG Server is around 60ms).

[C4iLL]

It's because you rarely come to the net : when you come to the net with a ping of 200, it's almost as sensitive as playing a volley on Elite with an average volleyer... The solution is to adapt your volley to this new sensibility, but it's hard. As Algo says there's not a lot of solutions ^^

Anyway, I honestly have the feeling that Gasquet may just not have the weapons anymore to beat a good Djokovic/Nadal after several matches played vs good players using them. It's mainly due to the lowering of the wings precision in my opinion, which make the cross court less effective and harder to do than in 1.11.

Even if Djokovic and Nadal have seen their stats lowered as well in this domain, it's easy for them to catch these cross court on lines whereas before it was often a winner (especially on BH, but even on FH, the cross court is even more useless now.

Now I admit this is realistic : in real life Gasquet has no chance at all to beat these guys.

[VMoe86]

It's because you rarely come to the net : when you come to the net with a ping of 200, it's almost as sensitive as playing a volley on Elite with an average volleyer... The solution is to adapt your volley to this new sensibility, but it's hard. As Algo says there's not a lot of solutions ^^

Maybe playing to the percentages is the right thing to do in such matches, adapting to the "wind" tactically, not just technically.

Anyway, I honestly have the feeling that Gasquet may just not have the weapons anymore to beat a good Djokovic/Nadal after several matches played vs good players using them. It's mainly due to the lowering of the wings precision in my opinion, which make the cross court less effective and harder to do than in 1.11.

Harder to do, no, but you need a bit more time to execute them as well as before, which gives the opponent more time to position or read it. Also keeping in mind that Plexicushion is some slow surface (too slow for my liking ), one has to come up with some special Short Accelerations (to get some better angles).