Roger Federer came through smoothly against Stepanek and even showed glimpses of his trademark magic with 3 stunning backhands in the final game of the 2nd set.
We were at the Open last night and enjoyed watching some close matches involving 2 talented young players, Del Potro and Nishikori. Del Potro has been hailed as “the future of tennis” but he looked like a typical modern player, i.e., big serve, big forehand, solid two-handed backhand, mediocre volleys. I’m sure he’ll be pretty succesful but I wasn’t blown away by his skills. Frankly, I like Nishikori better. He’s got a lot more variety and imagination and showed great mental strength to come back in the 5th set after blowing a 2 sets to love lead against one of the game’s great grinders, David Ferrer. It was a lot of fun seeing matches in Armstrong and the Grandstand where you get a much better feel for all three dimensions of the game. At Ashe, you don’t really see much of the height and spin variations in the game and it looks a bit like video game tennis.
I’m looking forward to the next week of tennis and am cautiously optimistic about Federer’s chances.
