US Open 2013

[VMoe86]

I will let the sign up open as well on Tuesday -- maybe some players (Elias, Fox, woowhat for example) still want to join. Do not ask "When is the Draw out?"

[Richie1308]

When is the Draw out?

[VMoe86]

When is the Draw out?

Now.

Draw

butcher, C4iLL, isaldor and pidzi in the same quarter -- magically rigged.

Good luck everyone!

[C4iLL]

Easy draw, I'm "on my way to the title" as someone used to say

[djarvik]

Green-is-in!

[C4iLL]

Let's give a report about my 1/8 vs Pidzi (btw it's a shame no one provided a report till now despite numerous interesting matches ^^).

Globally speaking, I think I've done a good match, with a lot of deep shots, lot of lines and good sequences but I wasn't able to transform my occasions, mainly because of his great service on the right moments.

Concrelty, I had the feeling that nothing goes on my side throughout the match whereas everything went on his side. I was never rewarded I mean : everytime I had the occasion to convert a relative domination, the dynamic was broken by several things (a stupid fault from me, a lag, a good point from him, a good serve, an "airball" etc).

This is my main feeling : in these matches, the first step is to be dominant but the big one is to convert it in the score to get a real mental edge ; and yesterday everytime I had this possibility I failed to achieve it to put pressure on his shoulders.

For instance in the beginning of the first set, I had several break points, which would have give me a confidence boost if converted, but he saved them nicely.
His confidence then raised, while mine stayed the same or decreased, which resulted in a better focus from him and a less good from me on the very next service = break for him.
The first set is lost 6-1 but I could have won it by this score too if things would have turned well on several games. That's life

Second set, till 4-3 we were equal, but he broke and won the set 6-3 with the realism of a champion. It's the same scenario in the third set.

At the end, we scored approximately the same number of winners, but I did 20 more UE than him and at at that level this makes the difference.
These UE were mainly done during 8+ shots exchanges, which he usually won (72% won for him !).
On my side, I dominated the short and middle exchanges (respectively 52% and 56% won for me) but the match was played on long exchanges.
And on this domain, even if we hit approximately the same high qualitative shots, he was tactically superior on these exchanges, with a great read of my patterns, and a great defense. I had two precise gameplans but they globally didn't work ^^

Anyway, I'm actually not really disappointed because this result is the consequence of his great form/confidence and of my relative disinterest/lack of practice of TE after a very active post wimbledon period.
I'm now looking forward the Masters, which will be my real objective

[J. Grilo]

Ok, here is a short report of my last match:

[QF] J.Grilo vs. Richie1308 - 1/6, 4/6, 3/6

The first two games began pretty promising to me. I kept the pace of him and we had from the beginning on long rallies. If i am remember right, i had even a break point at his first serve. Unfortunately, he broke me afterwards and i started to play unpatience, so the set went very fast to Richie.

The more games we played, the more problems we had with stamina. We had almost a rally-average of 10 (whole match), just to give you an idea, how long our rallies were.

Especially at the second and third set, i went alot of times to the net and it works awesome at the second set, i had almost 90% success at the net. There were some breaks on both sides, but with a good end to him, after he broke me at 4/4.

Our Stamina were pretty low, all the time, so i was trying to be more aggressive - overall - to cut the rallies. More risk shots and net play, but on third set, i couldn't keep the level, at the net.

Actually, i was surprised, that i could break him sometimes and kept his pace at the rallies. In this case, i was happy, even i had many miss-strikes (didn't hit the ball), but that's because i had to be always in a good position to hit the ball close and fast to the line.

[Vramvrim]

A little report about my match vs VMoe as well, quarterfinals, Fish vs Verdasco. Previous matchs against him were remarkably long, so I wanted to shorten points coming to the net this time, especially since it worked against Richie at Cincinnati.

It worked ok, but VMoe's passing shots were quite good, so I could not rush the net as much as I planned. Baseline rallies were balanced, as expected it was not easy to hit a winner from there. What made the difference was my serve, combined to the fact that I started the match well this time, which allowed me to put pressure on return games.

The scoreline is harsh to VMoe, there wasn't that much of a difference in rallies. Simply the serve really helped me out, 20 aces vs 3. I wish him best luck for the rest of the year. Now I expect a big match against The Dude who has been in great form lately, improving very quickly in a few months.

[VMoe86]

Let me also add a bit to Vramvrim's report. Since I was aware of his tactic against Richie's Ferrer I knew my passing shots and low balls had to work well and this really worked, he came less to the net (so it was actually bad, him coming in more would have been good for me ).

From the baseline, this time around I was not willing to play longer rallies, but finishing points quickly with Verdasco is also not easy: Normal accelerations a bit too slow, their bounce not troubling enough to produce shorter balls and short accelerations are basically only winners when you get a short ball. I was taking risks, even hitting shots when I knew (or had very high chance) of red errors, which at times produced very nice winners but also the errors.

As Vramvrim said, the key difference was the serve and maybe also return position: I was stubborn by standing basically at the standard return position, so I was getting aced a bit more and giving shorter returns off a good serve.

My best moment was in the 2nd set, 0-5 down and 0-40 on my serve, triple bagel point for Vramvrim. I saved that game with some really good hitting and in majority of 3rd set it was also better quality from me. After all, even with our approach this time, we still had Average Rally Length of 8, at least I only had lost 3 bars of overall energy, Vramvrim a bit more (4 or 5 bars I think).

Winners to errors: 47 to 28 for him, 43 to 33 for me, it is not bad stats after all, but I was playing this match with a different mindset, more like trying a bit things out in a real match. With a different approach I might have taken more games, but I don't think I would have won, at least not with Verdasco. So, congrats to Vramvrim and good luck in the SF against The Dude!

If I qualify for WTF (and with my 4005 points including the US Open points I should do so, since Alex is banned, Cerji and Clog have disappeared, I only see C4iLL and pidzi overtaking me when I don't play anything until WTF) that is very likely to be my next tournament. A combination of less time, having spent many hours for tour not just on court and thus kind of needing some time off (and looking for a bit different gameplay again ) -- hopefully finding some motivation again.

[pidzi]

Well because USO has already finished i feel like i should write a report of another great match against my biggest rival and for me the best player who ever played the Tour, Richie.

First of all was coming to the match with a highest amount of confidence i could accumulate throughout the USO series and practice sessions, since my last match i regularly lost no matter if official match or practice set was more than month ago against The Dude, so i really believe in myself going to match against Richie the Best especially after the our last matches in which both of em i was really close to score a 2nd win against him.

First set started just how i wanted and imagined, with me greatly playing on serve and i made it to quite fast score lead 5/2 but then he somehow realized he has to switch to the max level he can play to maintain in the match.....and so he did it and started to play the level i was used to from our matches and hi managed to tie the score 5/5. He was really on fire while me i cant say i was playing worse he just started to prove his greatness so i had to start finding solutions to his game and i employed some great decisions and shotsmaking and i managed to win the set in great style 7/5.

Now i was really confident about the match outcome which should go in my favor but right from the start he break my serve and then it started......From now on i felt like im playing Incredible 9 CPU which im usually spar with and it was seriously INCREDIBLE what game Richie showed me in 2nd and 3rd set. Again im not telling i played badly, yeah i made more mistakes in those 2 sets together than in 1st set but it was not due to my bad game it was because Richie made ONLY 7 mistakes in both sets together !!!! INcredible stuff even though we had like 4 or 5 bars stamina left and with this precision of shots rapidly decreases and yet he was not doing mistakes and still hit winners. THese 2 sets was the highest level of play i ever have to faced. Kudos to Richie for him to bring the game to another level.

Then I came to the 4th set with the feeling im not playing badly at all but i can increase level a bit and pray that richie will drop down a little so i can have another chance to go to decider. We started with like 3 or 4 bars, really bad for my dolgopolov game but i decided to play richies pushy game and sustain in rally as loong as possible with some occasional surprising attacks. And it really did work for my surprise, when i was not doing the mistakes he started to do and i managed to break him in 1/1 and succesfully confirm the break for 3/1 and from then on we held our serves quite comfortably especialy because we declined a bit on return and we also started to hit a bit more risky shots so there were more mistakes in this set. But 5/4 for me serving for the set, i knew that if i win this set it could give me great confidence boost for the decider, so i was doing everything i could to close the set. But so did RIchie tried to break back so he could finish it in 4th sets and this became as the longest and the most epic game in the entire match which lasted for like 15 mins with 20 deuces but i finally mangaed to make it but for a high cost - i was really exhausted.

DECIDER. In the first rally of the set the game had frozen so had to rehost with full stamina and that completely destroyed my game while richie totally utilize this situation and destroyed me with not really much effort. This was my weakest set against him in all of our matches and i was quite disappointed i threw in it in such a way because i felt like i could have again a chance win the match but i couldnt do it.

And thats it, again kudos to Richie who proved me that he is best player i can play against and greatest rival in here who matches against him are pushing me closer to almost his level everytime we play.

AND ofc Congratz Rich for USO, you are the best

[C4iLL]

Very interesting report

A few feelings about that :
- 7 faults in 2 sets at such a level is really incredible ^^
- Winning a fifth set vs Richie is a huge challenge, because winning 2 sets against him require a lot of concentration. So when you arrive in the fifth, you're kind of exhausted mentally when you've just achieved this...
- Simon is an interesting character, you can play both offensive and defensive with him (which is not the case of Fed, in my opinion).
In real life, when he exploited his full level, he was able to destroy the top4 with his special ability.

Congratulations to Richie for the title, he never stops proving he's great n°1 for the tour with a nice behavior and great skills, both tactically and technically. It's a motivation and an example for everyone : at the beginning of 2013 he still played challengers I think ! And now he has 2 slams in the pocket

[Vramvrim]

Quick report about the final against Richie, quick because there isn't that much to say in fact. I was completely dominated from the baseline, not effective while attacking and having trouble returning Richie's attacks, who was taking the ball very early. I felt very slow in this match and always late on the ball in this match, was in trouble all the time with angles Richie managed to produce with Gillou.

I only managed to get one set and a somewhat decent scoreline with Fish's serve, which was amazing to say the least. 23 aces against a returner like Richie is pretty good, but I can't have 100% first serve Relying only on serve against him is impossible, so even though I did my best to hang on even with my level, he logically won, being superior in every aspect. Congrats to him, he was the best in this tournament, impressive against Pidzi and too good for me in this final. Undoubtedly the world number one with 2 slams in one year while being a newcomer at the start of the year. A little disappointed, but I feel no shame in losing against him and being the number 2, now I will take some time off, play the 2 Masters 1000, maybe on additionnal tournament for some player testing and then the World Tour Finals.

[Richie1308]

Thanks for the congrats ! Both Pidzi and Vramvrim described well how the matches went so I will not say more on this.

I'll just say that against Pidzi, I had an excellent feeling in the second and third set with Gillou, playing perfectly the strategy making Pidzi travel everywhere on the court with great variations, great angles and very few faults. The plan went more than perfectly and it was a great feeling when you see your tactic working perfectly well. As Pidzi made a good comeback in the 4th, it could have been a close 5th set but I handled really better the full stamina which completely changed the strategy. Anyway, as often against Pidzi it turns to be a very close match and I can say I'm happy that for the moment the end keeps being good for me ! He keeps making progress in his game and he will definitely hit the first places in ranking soon.

Concerning the final, I don't have anything to add, I've always said Vramvrim was one of the best some time ago and he is confirming this, also getting the second place in ranking. The final felt quite unbalanced with Fish cause I more felt like playing against Isner in reality : a hugh amount of free point with the serve but I had a complete domination from the baseline so it was quite weird. I had some bad luck in the second, especially a netcord on a debreak point while I had the advantage in the point, it was hard to accept. Fortunately I had no problem on my service games later and had just to break him once per set and almost give up on the other games.

Now I'm looking forward the end of the season with the intention to keep going like this until the final Masters at London.