The Last Slovenian – Andreja Klepac – Out Of Roland Garros
The doubles are in full swing at Roland Garros and Andreja Klepac, the last player from Slovenia left in the tournament was on court today.
She and her partner Ekaterina Dzehalevich were up against A. Medina Garrigues and Virginia Ruano Pascual, the third seeds.
Andreja and Ekaterina started the match nervously, making bad mistakes while the girls from Spain played solid, high percentage tennis with no special shots.
The second set was more competitive as Andreja and Ekaterina realized that they had to attack and it was just the experience of Anabel and Virginia that got them the second set.
The final score was 6-2, 6-4 and in my opinion, the key moments of this match were the cross court rallies.
Andreja and Ekaterina were not calm enough to keep the rally going and sooner or later they changed their shot to the down-the-line where the net player had an easy put away.
They were not forced to change direction as the opponents almost NEVER poached, but in their mind they were either afraid of poaching or just couldn’t handle the mental pressure of rallying and looked to shorten the point.
I hope they watch this match on tape later and see how many times they played straight to the net player where there was no attack and no need to do that.
Some other matches I saw…
Dominika Cibulkova – Gisela Dulko 6-4, 6-2
I stayed on court #2 for the Cibulkova – Dulko match because I had a good seat and wanted to see Stepanek and Čilić.
Cibulkova played perhaps 10% faster shots than Dulko and in the end, that was what made the difference. Both girls moved very well and struck the ball very cleanly.
Dulko is very elegant, and plays very nice looking tennis, while Cibulkova is a smaller, more bulky type of player who fights for every ball.
The fighting game prevailed today over elegant looking shots – as is often the case in tennis…
Marin Čilić – Radek Stepanek 6-1, 7-6, 6-3
Stepanek got up with the wrong foot today as nothing worked for him. He was making very unusual unforced errors and not making many great shots.
Čilić played well but nothing extraordinary. His serves were very tough though; he is very tall and his kick serve kicks up extremely high.
Čilić also moves surprisingly well for such a tall figure and has a very calm demeanor. He is a dangerous opponent to meet right now…
Rafael Nadal – Lleyton Hewitt 6-1, 6-3, 6-1
I watched Hewitt many times on TV but never realized that he hits the ball so flat. That’s the difference of watching tennis live, where you can see the ball trajectory, see the ball spin and hear the sound of shots, and watching it on TV.
These flat shots are really not effective on clay and end up right in the hitting zone of his opponent. Hewitt really has to hit very close to the lines to force mistakes and that’s what he was trying to do against Nadal.
Of course he missed too many, Nadal passed him a couple of times and had no problems with a typical Hewitt rally ball which didn’t bounce up high.
Hewitt’s technique is perfectly adapted to hard courts where his shots would skid off the hard court and make them much more difficult.
Remember, Hewitt also won Wimbledon because of his fast and flat shots but they don’t work well on clay court where you need to kick the ball up in order to neutralize the opponent.
Maria Sharapova – Yaroslava Shvedova 1-6, 6-3, 6-4
Another tough day for Maria. Yaroslava started the match as if she was ranked top 10 and not 110 as she is in reality.
Maria had some problems with bad bounces but it was really very aggressive tennis and perfect drop shots from Shvedova that were too much for Maria.
The statistics (as I like to call this) eventually caught up with Shvedova and she missed a few shots more while Sharapova improved her baseline percentage by a little.
That’s all it takes and the match turns around. Sharapova is experienced enough to have seen this happen hundreds of times in her career so she just plays her game and looks to find her best percentage between errors and winners.
Her opponents cannot keep up and end up missing more than hitting winners…
It was another very crowded day in Roland Garros and if you’re unlucky, a guy with a hair cut like this may sit in front of you…
Luckily I could still move a few seats away at that time as the stadium was not totally full. While watching top players live in Roland Garros is great, there are all sorts of annoyances I’ll share in tomorrow’s post… 
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May 30th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
We should not forget Michelle Larcher de Brito, that young girl has lot to prove.
Her movement is awesome, the rotation of body, the angle she was trying to hit a winner.
Just great, and she is prepared even when was 40-15 she came back and won the game.
And this year we should maybe ask the question what should Rafa do to win over Federer? How to face that serve, the perfect net play.
Rafa doesn’t look to have problem with the long rallies and often wins them, also he is fast mover and can return Federer’s great drop shots. Federer made some changes, he controls the point from the serve until finishing on net.
Great Federer, but let’s wait and see what will Rafa prepare if we have another Rafa- Roger final.