30-15

ATP Challenger Meerbusch 2018 - August 16 2018 - Doubles QF Some pictures from these doubles matches: Teymuraz Gabashvili & David Marrero (RUS/ESP) def. Vladyslav Manafov & Szymon Walkow (UKR/POL/4) 6-3, 7-5 Grzegorz Panfil & Vladimir Uzhylovsky (POL/UKR) def. Rameez Junaid & David Pel (AUS/NED/3) 3-6, 6-4, 10-7

Final match of the day on Yonex court. A walk in the park for the Dimitar and Maxime. I had seen Maxime Janvier before this year at the Lille Challenger in France but the other faces were new to me. Maxime served big as usual and he formed a good team with Kuzmanov, ranked 302 in singles. The Spanish duo smiled a lot and weren’t very inspired to make it a tough evening. They were beaten quite easily and didn’t seem to care much. At around 8 o’clock it was a good time to go back home.

Veteran signature showman Dustin Brown (age 33, ranked 257) made tennis look stunningly easy today. Alexandre Muller (age 21, ranked 411) would win just three games. The French youngster’s athletic abilities were neutralised by Brown, who was red-hot and hit everything he could. From dropshots, aces to flat forehand return winners, it was all Dustin Brown today. Dustin needed just 43 minutes (!) to win this match. Alexandre shouted at one point, when walking to his seat: ‘je ne peut bien faire’ meaning ‘I can’t do anything’. That illustrated how desperate he felt.

The match wasn’t tight at the start, with Krawietz running away quickly 6-2 and also in front early in the second set. But Hassan gradually made less errors and some of his netplay now paid off. He had a miracle ‘wrist-backflip-lob’ with his back to the net, which must be featured in some ATP highlight reel. Krawietz acknowledged the shot by saying ‘Das ist Wahnsinn’ (that’s crazy) even before it touched the clay behind him, knowing it was good and unreachable. Hassan apologised for being lucky. He later on clinched the tiebreaker. I left the match for the Brown-Muller match and a proper seat. Sitting on the ground became less and less comfortable and Dustin is always a pleasure to watch. Krawietz took the decider 7-5. That set turned out to take just as long as Brown’s entire match.

Sousa’s last two Challengers have been good with one win and one runner up result. He’s trying to make the final push towards the top 100 for a while now. At rank 124 he is close and he has had a rank of 102. Pedro’s good run would continue, as Jelle Sels had an off-day. His serving was mediocre and he hit too many unforced errors. It was unfortunate to see Jelle go out after such a successful run through the qualifiers. It was Jelle’s fifth match in this tournament and I was really looking forward to a good performance from my countryman. But Pedro was just too good. His court movement was solid and he made few mistakes. A pretty easy straight sets victory for the Portuguese second seed.

Both players yelled at themselves and were unhappy with the state of the court. There were indeed quite some bad bounces. Molleker was very vocal about it, calling out ‘diese scheissplaetze hier’ which translates to ‘the shitcourts here’. But to be honest his tennis simply wasn’t as good as everyone had hoped, including himself. Rudolf admitted this after the match. Johan lost his mojo (and racquet) in the second set and slid towards defeat very quickly. Mentally and in terms of consistency both players have some work to do to have a chance with the big boys. Disappointing match quality overall but nice to have seen these talented guys anyway.

It was a happy ending for Bourgue, who surely didn’t want a third set being played the next day.

The first time I’ve heard anybody say to a player “you did 100% better than you aimed for!” after that player lost 6-0, 6-2. In fact, it was the mother of Roman Warias, a German wildcard who played his first (and last) ever match on ATP level. Roman won a tournament where the prize was 100 euros and a wildcard for the Meerbusch qualifying round. He said after the match that he was happy with his level and that his aim was to win one game off of an ATP pro such as Alexandre Muller (ranked 404, career high 302 in July 2017). Roman has a full time office job and according to his dad didn’t train much since he doesn’t have a lot of time anymore. The difference between both players was the tempo, physical fitness and amount of unforced errors (Muller made very few). The opening game took a while after many deuce situations. According to Warias that kind of ruined his chances in the games thereafter since he is not as fit as the pros. When Roman won his first game in the second set, he smiled and cheers came from the terrace of Yonex court. Sometimes the story is better than the match itself! Easy hour for Alexandre, an impressive athletic presence on the court.

Lamasine dominated the third set. Brouwer hit some amazing balls but couldn’t keep up the consistency. Tristan won the third set 6-1 and showed some skillful tennis. It was time for the Dutchies to go to their hotel after a long day of waiting and intense tennis.

Maxime Chazal is ranked 643 and plays almost only clay court events. Both players actually have a typical clay court game. There were some entertaining long rallies and in the end Maxime had the edge over Manuel in the final set.

Solid win for Jelle, who celebrated his 23rd birthday the day before and went on the Meerbsuch roadtrip with his buddy and also Dutch pro Gijs Brouwer. Jelle has made good progress in the rankings and is one spot away from his all time high rank of 367. Later that day coincidentally we chatted a bit about his life on the tour whilst we were rooting for Gijs Brouwer to win. The boys couldn’t afford to bring their coach with them on trips like these (only in larger groups) because it’s tough to cover the costs. Jelle explained you need to get deep in Futures (SF or F) and play out-of-ITF/ATP tour money tournaments in Germany or France to earn something. I hope Jell will continue to play well. His next tournament is a $25k future in Poland.

A lefty versus righty battle between two youngsters. The lefty is Yshai Oliel, an 18 year old Israeli ranked 586. The righty is local 17 year old junior Henri Squire, ranked 1332. His only pro appearances so far have been in Germany, the last time also in Meerbusch in 2017, losing in R1 as a main draw wildcard. Oliel has seen recent successes in Futures, but in Challengers he has not reached a single main draw this year yet. Today he set another first step, beating Squire with solid deep topspin strokes. The youngest of the two millennials shouted ‘das ist doch nicht normal!’ (that’s not normal) after some missed shots. Very polite compared to some of the vulgarities I’ve heard on the courts today. Not much more to say than that Yshai was clearly the better player today. Good to see two such youngsters go at it and I’m curious what will become of them.

Somewhat surprised that this match was still going on, I arrived on a virtually empty court 6, behind centre court. For this tournament named “GWS Grandstand”. Must be the first grandstand without seats I’ve ever seen. Oh, the irony! The third set was about to start and both players forced breaks. Alen came back from behind and clinched a clutch 7-5 third set. Vit looked the more solid player at the start of the set and honestly I wasn’t convinced at all that Alen could come back, yet he did. Was nice to see him again after he lost in the Scheveningen Q1 earlier this summer. I also enjoyed to see another player I had never heard of in Vit Kopriva (ranked 568). Vit has a funny serve motion where he lifts the racquet above his head and only after that he starts the toss motion. Whatever works! Avidbza advances though.

Back to the match where Slobodchikov lost control over Tyurnev and himself. Ronald received a time violation which, in his defense, came out of nowhere and was an unnecessary call from an otherwise good referee. Slobodchikov made too big of a deal out of it though and started a discussion with the ref. Tyurnev had started to serve better and broke serve a couple of times to win the set. He copy-pasted the second set to the scoreboard and won a sloppy match.

More than an hour after the expected 18:30 start, Giannessi and De Bakker started their match on centre court. Another lefty (Alessandro) versus righty match (Thiemo). The evening breeze cooled down the crowd but the heat on the court would remain. Giannessi started well in the first set and was clearly the better player. Last year around this time he was 87th in the world, his highest ranking ever. De Bakker (ranked 40th in 2010) stubbornly kept playing dropshots but got punished at the net almost every time. I was impressed with Alessandro’s movement and speed. He played solid topspin strokes to which Thiemo often had no answer and was the first to produce an error. In the second set De Bakker raised his game. He played better selected shots, some nice forehand winners and served better also. The match remained close after both players broke each other’s serve and faced many breakpoints. A very intense tiebreaker followed. De Bakker erased matchpoints and had a killer net ball fall his way (Giannessi had one to his favour on an important point earlier). It resulted in Giannessi pulling off some Italian drama falling to the ground and looking at the skies in pain as if struck by a bullet. Giannessi was upset a lot about unclear calls throughout the set and demanded an unimpressed supervisor to come down from the stands to do something about it. As the supervisor walked away, Alessandro seemed to curse at him a few times to stress his point. After De Bakker clutched out the tiebreak, the match was suspended due to darkness and the outcome was not decided at the time of this writing. Note 21-7-2018: Game, set, match De Bakker, won the third set 6-4.

ATP Challenger Scheveningen - July 20 2018 - QF - Kimmer Coppejans (BEL/Q) def. Oscar Otte (GER/4) 7-5, 6-4 After the long and heated Maden vs Balazs match, Kimmer Coppejans and fourth seed Oscar Otte started their encounter on a virtually empty centre court. It wasn’t a pretty match unfortunately. Coppejans played well though, better than in qualifying when I saw him earlier in the week. He limited his errors and hit some nice groundstroke winners. Watching him today it was no surprise to see him in the quarter finals. Otte is a tall and skinny German who would love to forget his match I assume. He got frustrated early and received a ball abuse violation. Unfortunately we didn’t get to see his best game today. Credit to Kimmer for being tough and returning serve pretty well. He made Oscar play uncomfortable shots and deservedly won in straight sets.

Quickly dropped by between matches at 5-5 in the first set on the packed court 1, probably courtesy of Dustin Brown. Took some pictures and witnessed some spectacular rallies. The top seed German team lost though.