|
A lot has happened, and with an explosion of RL busyness I didn't get the update done as soon as I wanted to. Missed a few friendly matches that I would have set up also. Se la vi. In any case, the final Slam of the year is over and the final leg of the season has begun.
Before I get to that, a bit of a strategy note. I chose to skip the USO with Girish Girsh and play a small challenger instead. The reason for this is that it's basically not worth it to him to play it when he's almost certainly going to lose in the first or second round. When he was of a low enough ranking to go through qualifying, he would get at least five matches in so it was definitely worthwhile, but not now that he's good enough to make the main draw as a direct acceptance, but not good enough to go anywhere yet. I find I'm still learning small strategic wrinkles. Girsh played in the tier-3 Bangkok event, and with most of the usual suspects opting for the USO he was the top seed. The other solid players who were there almost universally were badly overplayed coming in, and he won the singles title easily. A good opportunity to get a number of matches in, and add another challenger title to his points.
US Open
Things first started to get a bit dicey for Anil Mehul in the third round, against 27th-seeded Peruvian Thiago Herrera, a good young player. After two close sets, he made it through 7-5, 6-4, 6-1, but it was tense. That brought up a match with noted giant-killer Cestmir Marcek, who had beaten him twice in the past couple of years though both matchups were on clay. A competitive match was expected but Mehul is a little better and is the favorite. He mastered an initial tiebreak and moved through to the quarterfinals without the loss of a set, 7-6(2), 6-3, 7-6(4). Normally this would be enough to ensure that he'd move up in the Race, but Topolski, Goncharenko, and Prieto all joined him. Some of the better players paid the price for overplaying, Elder and Hogue particularly who lost early, but they are out of reach and nearly qualified already.
The quarterfinal opponent was Benda. While Mehul had won their only meeting this year resoundingly back in Indian Wells, he wasn't in that same kind of form and the world no. 1 was playing better on hardcourts these days. The match essentially came down to the first-set tiebreak. Mehul was up a mini-break early, but the German rallied. After fighting off several set points and failing in one chance of his own, Mehul lost the breaker 10-8. He fought back to take the third set but was downed in four, 7-6(8), 6-2, 3-6, 6-3. A credible performance, but a round short of his semifinal run last year and not good enough to make up any ground given the good performance of his rivals.
As it was in Australia, Iglar defeated Benda in the final. This time it went four sets. Mastery of all surfaces is shown in the fact that the #1 reached all four Slam finals this year, which combined with his dominance on clay essentially has made up unreachable even for the Czech phenom. Topolski matched his best performance here with a semifinal finish and tight four-set loss to Benda. Antonin Iglar, meanwhile, has won the last three hardcourt Slams and most of the Masters in that timeframe, and with three Slam titles to his name is second among active singles players to Benda's four.
|