Wow! What a start

In recent times, much has been said, discussed and written about the upper echelons of men’s tennis. The chief protagonists, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray have dominated the scene so much that it’s entirely forgivable if one stumbles for answers when asked to name the supporting actors. For, the top 10 other than these four have a combined total of one Grand Slam title — Juan Martin Del Potro, 2009 U.S. Open — and just three Masters 1000 titles.

While the situation at the top has more or less been static, in fact stretching back to the last 35 majors, the development among the next rung has remained an unfinished business. All that Tomas Berdych, David Ferrer, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Richard Gasquet et al, who were once expected to cause earthquakes by repeatedly challenging their superiors, have done is to cause mild tremors and breed a false sense of hope.

But hope, as they say, is eternal and this is what sustains sport when monotony kicks in. It is this very optimism that has kept up the spectator interest in the Aircel Chennai Open for the past three years in spite of its diminishing star appeal (Chennai had three of the top 20 competing in 2014, while Doha had five — all from the top 10 — and Brisbane four).

Coming as it does at the start of the season, there is always a desire for new plots to emerge signifying a new dawn that will lead us into the year. In 2012, it saw a young Milos Raonic, after being crowned the ATP Newcomer of the Year, overcoming the odds to win the tournament. In 2013, Berdych was the top-seed and was touted as the man most expected from the next generation to lead the charge. A rejuvenated Janko Tipsarevic, fresh from his maiden appearance at the elite ATP World Tour Finals, however won the title and he too promised much.

But Tipsarevic has fizzled out since then and Berdych ended the year without a single title. Raonic has taken two full years to realise his potential by breaking into the top 10 though one would term it a great achievement going by the current standards.

In 2014, the competition was back again with its latest offering being yet another player waiting for his rough edges to be chiselled out for him to be made into the next big thing — Stanislas Wawrinka. That he won the title as the top-seed in Chennai does augur well.

For long Wawrinka has found it tough to sever his identity from Federer. From Federer’s wingman, the surrogate, the other Swiss, Wawrinka has been everything but himself. It also doesn’t help in attracting eyeballs when your compatriot is dubbed the ‘greatest ever’ and his tennis ‘a religious experience’.

But 2013 was a watershed year for the Swiss. After having started at No. 17, the 28-year-old reached a career high No. 8. Towards the fag end of the year, he almost upstaged Federer in the rankings; a sign of him coming into his own.

Wawrinka’s signature shot has always been his single-handed backhand, which enamours aficionados. But through the week, it was the other facets of his game which made people sit up and take notice. His vastly improved serve — a peculiar one which has almost no leg movement — and a lethal forehand were both on display as he demolished a field already depleted by No. 15 Mikhail Youzhny’s and No. 16 Fabio Fognini’s pullouts. Defending champion Tipsarevic had withdrawn even before a ball was struck.

In a sense, Wawrinka’s triumph was a win-win for the organisers as well as himself. It was the sort of assurance that the tournament and its fans needed, of the top-seed standing tall amid the ruins accentuated by many a player withdrawal. For Wawrinka, it was as perfect a start as he could imagine. “Victories are always special,” he said. “I am feeling very good this year. I am playing better. This is the best I have played in the last six years here. But it’s just one week. I need to push through the year. I still feel I can improve. My serve can get better, my forehand too. Top four is still too far and I have no special goals. But I’ll do my best.”

One hopes, as always, that it doesn’t turn out to be another false dawn.

http://www.sportstaronnet.com/stories/20140125505804700.htm

Mother of all scandals: L’affaire Armstrong

“Twenty-plus-year career, 500 drug controls worldwide, in and out of competition. Never a failed test. I rest my case.” This was Lance Armstrong in May 2011. For close to a decade and a half, the once poster-boy of cycling, used different forms of such defences to erect a myth around him, become a hero much beyond cycling and stand as a beacon of hope to thousands of innocent cancer survivors.

Winning the Tour de France is no mean feat. To do it after having once been given 20 per cent chance of surviving cancer is almost unthinkable. Repeating it for six more years is impossible. But from 1999 to 2005 it seemed possible. In a sport so used to constantly re-arranging titles, he rode like a colossus. So much so that the colour yellow, so sacred to the Tour, was associated more with Armstrong’s cancer foundation Livestrong’s wristbands than the jersey itself.

His every word was believed. The written word especially, through two of his books — It’s Not About the Bike and Every Second Counts. Alas, these words now stand utterly discredited. In hindsight, they seem too good to be believed. But during his pomp it appeared so only to a handful of journalists, chief among them David Walsh, the chief sports writer of the Sunday Times, and the US Anti-doping Agency (USADA).

The first traces of clinching evidence appeared after his last appearance — the 2009 Tour de France. Starting 2010, the federal prosecutors probed Armstrong for the umpteenth time. The investigations were then closed in February 2012 without a reason being cited. The Texan said that it was a witch-hunt and the public as always trusted him.

But the bombshell arrived in October, when the USADA released its much awaited report that detailed the evidence collected so meticulously over the years and termed the doping programme “the most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping programme that sport has ever seen”.

Anyone familiar with Armstrong’s history would have expected him to fight this tooth and nail. But, bizarrely, he didn’t, and instead said, “There comes a point in every man’s life when he has to say, enough is enough. For me, that time is now.” This seemed an open admission of guilt, for which he would turn remorseful in a later interview with Oprah Winfrey in January 2013. He finally admitted that through his seven Tour de France victories, from 1999 to 2005, he “took EPO, testosterone, cortisone, blood-doped and used illegal blood transfusions.”

Writing in his book Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong, David Walsh narrates an incident which blew the whistle: “After his individual time trial at Metz earlier in the day, Christophe Bassons watched television coverage of the leaders in his hotel room. They travelled at a speed he couldn’t believe, for the race against the clock had once been his own speciality. He was especially interested in Armstrong’s performance because their physiological profiles weren’t that different: same height, same weight, Armstrong’s VO2 Max was 83 to Bassons’ 85. Regarded as a key barometer of athletic potential, the VO2 Max is the maximum capacity of an individual’s body to transport and use oxygen. Yet when Antoine Vayer did the maths afterwards, he told Bassons that he would have finished 6 kilometres behind Armstrong if they’d started at the same time.”

Now, in the post-Armstrong days, no one might actually cover the hairpins on the Alps at such pace and the races will have less of the melodrama. While this is perhaps the only positive fall out, the damage to the sport is surely long-term.

In an interview to Sportstar in March, the then International Cycling Union (UCI) president, Pat McQuaid, had this to say: “It is true that the Armstrong affair had a negative effect on cycling but one must remember that we are talking about activities that took place 10-15 years ago.” When the world of athletics still can’t come to terms with the “dirtiest race in history”, Ben Johnson’s 100m sprint in the 1988 Seoul Olympics, does it seem plausible to come to terms with this cycling saga?

That cycling was in the dark ages before Armstrong came was a common refrain. He has now single-handedly pushed it into the abyss. Every single race victory by anybody will now be viewed with suspicion. That 14 of the last 18 Tours have seen winners who were later penalised for doping doesn’t help. But seven of those are his. These titles are now nobody’s property. How can they be when a majority of those who could have been appointed champions in his place are already convicted dopers?

After Armstrong was caught, Bradley Wiggins, the 2012 Tour winner, said, “The anger is: I’ve got to pick up the pieces. He’s still a multi-millionaire and he’s not here to answer the questions. I can’t answer them because I’ve got to go and race.” This is the legacy that Armstrong leaves behind. Of a sport that cannot even come to terms with its tainted history let alone rectify it.

http://www.sportstaronnet.com/tss3702/stories/20140111508306100.htm

Wawrinka proves too good for Roger-Vasselin

Stanislas Wawrinka’s has been a well-documented struggle with self-confidence. For someone who has fought as long and as hard as him, it is tough to throw out the demon forever. While the end of 2013 was the first big step towards banishing it, in 2014 he would like to finally believe he is up there.

On Sunday, the quest for the same started perfectly. A 7-5, 6-2 win over seventh seed Edouard Roger-Vasselin gave him his second Aircel Chennai Open title and his fifth overall.

“It’s the best tennis I have played in my six visits to the city,” Wawrinka said. “I was expecting this tough match. Maybe I could have started it better. But I am really happy.”

One of Wawrinka’s problems in 2013 was that he found it tough to close out matches. After a nervy first set, in which the Frenchman hurled everything he had at Wawrinka, it was important for the old ghosts not to return.

“I had not lost a set this week,” Wawrinka said. “So I was confident. After the first set, it was crucial to make the right decisions and I did.”

Roger-Vasselin presented his opponent with some new problems to solve, something the Swiss had not got against his three previous opponents. He served and volleyed, chipped and charged to cut the rallies short.

“That’s the way I won against him in Basel last year,” said Roger-Vasselin. “It was the best way. But he played much better today, passed me better and he was simply too good.”

In the first set, there were to be no breaks till the 11th game. Though Wawrinka came close in the fourth, he fluffed four break points. A few forehands and backhands went awry. But when he connected, Roger-Vasselin’s double-handed backhand — which had worked so well against Marcel Granollers — found the depth, the angle and the power of Wawrinka’s shots too much to handle. The World No. 52 instead had to rely on the single handed slice to cover one more yard of court space.

Serving at 6-5, and on set point, Wawrinka let out a huge cry after Roger-Vasselin shanked his return. That seemed to release all pressure and the next set was smooth sailing.

Roger-Vasselin continued his net-rushing game even after Wawrinka broke him early in the second. With Wawrinka relentlessly chasing every drop shot, and in the process scooping some balls for winners of his own, Roger-Vasselin had to go finer.

Though he did find some success, he could not sustain it for long.

The top seed broke again in the fifth game to go 4-1 up and there was to be no looking back.

“It has been a great week for me,” said Roger Vasselin. “But it’s also very disappointing to lose. It’s a mixed feeling and I don’t know where my mind is right now.”

The 28-year-old Swiss’s ascent in 2013 came at a time when the thorough domination by the ‘Big Four’ was becoming slightly tiresome, Nadal and Djokovic’s see-saw rivalry notwithstanding. His was the new narrative that everybody lapped up instantly.

While this year, there is expected to be no let-off from the top four — as seen in Doha, where Rafael Nadal won, and Brisbane, where Roger Federer was the finalist — there is a yearning for Wawrinka to go one step further and gatecrash the top four.

“It’s still too far and I don’t ask myself that question yet,” the World No. 8 said, but the journey seems to have well begun.

Later on, in the doubles final, fourth seeds Johan Brunstrom of Sweden and Frederik Nielsen of Denmark defeated the unseeded Croatian pair of Mate Pavic and Marin Draganja 6-2, 4-6, 10-7.

The Scandinavian pair broke twice, in the sixth and the eight games, to take the first set 6-2 only for the Croats to level it at one set apiece by taking the second 6-4. In the match tie-break, Brunstrom and Nielsen clinched the title on their first championship point, winning it 10-7. This is Nielsen’s second career title — first since the Wimbledon 2012 crown that he won with Jonathan Marray — and Brunstrom’s fourth.

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-sports/article5543367.ece

Roger-Vasselin reaches his second ATP final

Players like Marcel Granollers don’t throw bombs at opponents. Nor do they make the crowd gasp in disbelief. They don’t possess shots that you would not see anywhere else. But what makes their game is their ability to hit, hit and keep hitting; in the mould of a typical Spanish grinder.

On Saturday, in the first semifinal at the Aircel Chennai Open, he gave a good account of that. The level that Granollers played over three sets was steady.

The swing in Edouard Roger-Vasselin’s fortunes over the same period was what decided the outcome. The French seventh seed won 6-2, 4-6, 6-3 to move into his second ATP tour final.

“I couldn’t have done anything better,” said Roger-Vasselin. “It’s a great start for the year. It’s never easy because every player is good these days. My goal was to win one title this year. Hopefully I can do it tomorrow.”

Sixth withdrawal

In Sunday’s final, he will meet top seed Stanislas Wawrinka who confirmed his spot after Canada’s Vasek Pospisil conceded his semifinal due to a back injury while trailing 4-6, 5-5. Pospisil’s retirement took the total count of withdrawals after the tournament started to six.

There were to be two storylines that emerged from Roger-Vasselin. One beautifully scripted using a flawless double-fisted backhand and the other, a loose one, courtesy a profligate forehand.

So good was his backhand that Granollers, from early in the first set, directed a majority of his serves to Roger-Vasselin’s forehand. But the Frenchman, to get his best shot more into play, stood wide when receiving serves from the deuce court and was closer to the ‘T’ when on the ad-side.

What this tactic did was to push Granollers to serve much wider, forcing him to miss first serves. Roger-Vasselin first broke in the sixth game. The decisive break came in the eighth — decorated with three superb backhand winners — which helped him take the opening set 6-2 and serve ahead in the second.

But, as good as the backhand was, his forehand was extremely conservative. On occasions when he did muster the courage to end rallies with it, there were just errors.

He doesn’t hit it flat but with a sizeable amount of top-spin to keep it well within the margin of error that a top-spin forehand affords. It was thus surprising to see the Frenchman fail to make the shot count, in spite of the elegant forehand swing that he possesses.

In the second set, Granollers went two breaks up. His shots were rarely loaded with power, but were perfectly placed. Two such moments came when Granollers hit accurate passes when the 30-year-old rushed to the net without covering the near court. Granollers did give up a break later but closed out the set 6-4.

After falling behind 2-0 in the third, Roger-Vasselin reeled off five games in a row including two breaks of serve, the first of which was after five deuces. He needed a whopping eleven chances in all to get those two breaks, something that he can least expect in Sunday’s final.

Baseline slugfest

The second semifinal between Wawrinka and Pospisil was a baseline slugfest. The 2011 champion broke in the fifth game to take the first set 6-4.

A break at 3-3 in the second set seemed enough for Wawrinka to clinch the match, but the fifth seed, in spite of experiencing discomfort in his back, fought admirably to even it out. However, the Canadian was cramped for movement and decided to quit with the score reading five games all in the second set

“I am really happy to be in final,” said Wawrinka.

“It was a tough match. I didn’t serve well but was aggressive from baseline. But I feel very sorry for my opponent.

“He was playing well. Hope he is ok. It’s the start of the season and it’s important to be ready physically.”

When the new ATP rankings are out on Monday, Pospisil will reach a career-high 30 and he will be the highest-ranked player without an ATP final appearance.

http://www.thehindu.com/sport/tennis/rogervasselin-reaches-his-second-atp-final/article5539166.ece

Wawrinka coasts past Bedene

Two rip-roaring quarterfinal match-ups and a 300th career win for Stanislas Wawrinka were what it took for the much beleaguered, injury hit Aircel Chennai Open to finally spring to life.

The day also marked the end of the Indian challenge in both singles and doubles.

Edouard Roger Vasselin overcame Dudi Sela 7-5, 6-7(6), 6-0 to set up a semifinal clash with Marcel Granollers who defeated the fourth seeded Benoit Paire 6-2, 3-6, 7-6(5).

The other semifinal will see top seed Wawrinka play Canada’s Vasek Pospisil, after they recorded victories over Aljaz Bedene (6-2, 6-1) and Yuki Bhambri (6-3, 6-3) respectively.

It was a pity that two of the most entertaining matches were pushed to the side courts, especially the Paire-Granollers tie which saw the fans scale the high-rise buildings near the court and also the spiral staircase on the Centre Court stands to catch the action.

After splitting the first two sets, Paire took what seemed like an unassailable 5-1 lead. He thought he had done enough to push Granollers off the cliff.

But, Granollers refused to go tumbling down; he dug his heels in and worked his way up.

A game knee didn’t help Paire. The crowd chanted ‘let’s go Benoit, let’s go’ in unison, but it failed to lift the Frenchman as he lost a third chance to serve out the match at 6-5.

This necessitated a tie-break which Granollers took 7-5.

No repeat

Wawrinka ensured that there was no repeat of last year’s quarterfinal, when he had lost to Bedene, apparently disturbed by a couple of poor calls. While the scoreline was flattering, it was a workout that the top seed would not have minded.

Bedene made him earn his points, running down balls and making him hit that one more shot in most of the rallies. However, Wawrinka was able to shift gears when pushed. His backhand failed on occasion but it was right on the money when it mattered the most: on game points in the fourth, fifth and sixth games of the second set.

Bedene’s serve let him down; he held only once right through the match. It took him five games to even get on the board. With Wawrinka serving for the first set at 5-0, the Slovene converted a break point with fantastic on-the-run forehand pass.

That was to prove his finest moment of the match.

The Bhambri-Pospisil match was equally one sided. A solitary break in the first set, and breaks in the opening and closing games of the second helped the Canadian clinch the match.

“I gave him early breaks and leads in both sets,” Bhambri said. “That made the difference. I matched him at the baseline but often over hit my shots. I also didn’t take too many chances and just stuck to what I knew.”

In doubles, wild-cards Karen Khachanov and Saketh Myneni, who had upset top seeds Rohan Bopanna and Aisam ul-Haq Qureshi 7-5, 2-6, 12-10 in the quarterfinals late on Thursday night, lost to Johan Brunstrom and Frederik Nielsen 6-4, 6-3.

R. Ramkumar and Sriram Balaji lost too, falling 6-3, 6-3 to to Croatia’s Marin Draganja and Mate Pavic.

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-sports/wawrinka-coasts-past-bedene/article5536852.ece

Bhambri gets past a hobbled Fognini

Italian third seed Fabio Fognini and Chinese Taipei’s Yen-Hsun Lu joined Janko Tipsarevic and Mikhail Youzhny on the list of players whose withdrawals have marred the Aircel Chennai Open so far.

Fognini, who had pulled out of the doubles competition two days earlier citing trouble with his left quadriceps, was trailing Yuki Bhambri 1-6, 5-5 when he decided to throw in the towel, thus sending an Indian into the quarterfinals of an ATP tour event for the first time since Somdev Devvarman in 2009.

However, there were to be no more heroics from local lad R. Ramkumar; he lost 6-2, 6-4 to sixth seed Marcel Granollers.

Meanwhile, Lu, nursing his right quadriceps, gave up even before a ball was struck against fifth seed Vasek Pospisil.

“It’s the same injury,” Fognini said. “I was feeling better since yesterday, that’s for sure. Otherwise I would not have turned up. After the last practise (Thursday morning) I felt better. I was, may be, 70 per cent (fit). I was actually happy to come again (to Chennai) this year. Last time I came (2012) I was injured. Now I am injured again. May be I will be third time lucky.”

With the injury, coming as it has just ten days before the start of the Australian Open, the World No.16 looked anxious.

“Right now, if you ask me about it (going to Australia), I would say no,” he said. “But I’ll probably go home, assess (the injury) and then decide. Let’s see.”

The flamboyant Italian did show glimpses of the kind of shot-making he is known for. The forehands, when he connected, were lethal. His movement was restricted, as expected, but his reach, even when static, was exemplary.

It was the curtailment of Fognini’s movement that Bhambri sought to exploit. In a marked difference from his earlier match — where his plan at the outset was to stay with his rival — Bhambri drew his opponent wide with his serve, and hit into the open court. Though he lacked the power to blast the ball past Fognini, he did induce a slew of errors, especially off the Italian’s backhand slice that either hit the net or went long.

Breaks in the fourth and sixth games were enough to clinch the set.

The performance was by no means flawless. On more than one occasion, Bhambri seemed to lose concentration.

He continued to open up the court as he had done in the first set but played it safe. On any other day, a top-20 player would have punished him.

Bhambri, however, did hit some delectable shots; twice he pulled off cross-court forehand winners from the tightest of angles.

There were to be no fist pumps after the victory, nor were arms thrown up in glee. A wide grin said it all.

“I’ll take the win,” Bhambri said. “We work hard to get there on court. Reaching the quarterfinals is special, more so in Chennai. To beat the World No. 64 and the No.16 for a set-and-a-half is great.

“I hope to play a great match tomorrow too (against Pospisil). I’ll back myself and am hoping to have a third good day.”

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-sports/bhambri-gets-past-a-hobbled-fognini/article5532587.ece

Top seed Wawrinka sends Becker packing

Much was expected on New Year’s Day at the Aircel Chennai Open. The thought of watching the top two seeds — Stanislas Wawrinka and Mikhail Youzhny — in back-to-back matches on Centre Court must have been enticing enough for the holiday crowd to pull in.

What one was welcomed by, however, was a crowd anything but holiday like. Then Youzhny, after just four games into his match against Dudi Sela, retired citing stomach trouble. That brought Wawrinka and Benjamin Becker onto the court, and just five games were played when the skies opened for the first time.

After a 45 minute break, Wawrinka returned to deliver a first-rate demolition job to pack off the German, beating him 6-3, 6-1 in just 53 minutes.

Becker has always possessed an impressive range of strokes. The German’s chances of success against Wawrinka lay in how he could pick the individual shots from his repertoire and string them together to construct points.

However, the first set saw none of his shot-making abilities. Often the rallies didn’t last long enough for Becker to even think of unleashing one of his powerful weapons.

Wawrinka broke Becker in the fifth game to lead 3-2. Becker did manage to somehow earn a couple of break points in the eighth game. But Wawrinka served his way out of the situation, and went on to break serve again in the following game to wrap up the set.

Becker started going for the lines in the second set. A couple of inside-out forehand winners suggested a willingness to seize initiative. But, Wawrinka just had too much firepower; Becker often found himself beaten to the ball by a couple of yards.

The World No.8 broke in the second and the sixth games to clinch the set 6-1, and advance to the quarterfinals.

“It’s a good start. I am really happy with my performance today. The court is quite slow and the weather humid. I was focused and was trying to have a good match. I feel good now,” Wawrinka said.

Earlier, Youzhny retired with his Israeli opponent serving 3-1 in the first set.

“It’s a stomach problem. I wanted to play, I tried my best, but it’s not possible. When you have restricted movement, it’s no use playing on Centre Court and losing. It (the problem) started last week in Thailand — some virus, and it has continued here too. I am sorry,” he said in a released statement.

There were to be two more injury pull-outs when Yen-Hsun Lu and Alexander Kudryavtsev, both conceded their respective doubles matches.

Later in the day, R. Ramkumar and Sriram Balaji overcame Americans Scott Lipsky and Rajeev Ram 7-5, 6-3.

http://www.thehindu.com/sport/tennis/top-seed-wawrinka-sends-becker-packing/article5527165.ece