Roland Garros 2014

[VMoe86]

The second Grand Slam of the season has already begun and an interesting clay season is going to find its end! Who will win? Take a look at the

Singles Draw

and the

Roland Garros 2014 Preview by C4iLL and IsniperXZ.

Then vote for who you think is going to win from the Top 8 in the Race Rank of the 2014 season or name someone else!

[Clog]

No offense to Maxbou, but we NEED a report about Butcher's match against him. I can't understand the score...

[Elias]

around 1000 ms delay in the first sets as far as i know (btw nobody should play in such conditions).

[inseedious]

Report for R16 inseedious vs C4ill



Well, one of the strangest match I ever played. Despite the score, in the first set I had a game/break point in every game, and this kept on partially during the second. I'm a lot disappointed to have not played a better match, exploiting the not so good form from C4ill, but I'm even more disappointed by my unforced errors. They were just too much, and 90% of them were green errors. Going out by a few centimeters.

Apart from my few training in the last days, I really wasn't used to play at a very low delay (84ms if I remember well, but it could be even 68ms), delay at which C4ill was used instead. I think this played a huge role in determining the result, cause I was totally unused to aim with a so low delay. Obviously, I'm not saying that C4ill won just thanks to that, because I think C4ill, at least at this moment, plays way better than me. But I wrote this report to say something interesting we were talking about after the match, when we were very surprised by the green errors from my side. Today, we played another official match, with a delay of 100ms, and the result was 7-5 7-6 for him, same matchup (double Gasquet), way closer. Yeah, those few ms really made a difference.

Obviously, we are used to play at a certain delay, and playing in slightly different conditions can really ruin a match. I think there should be some more rules about the delay and the latency, and I think my match and butcher's ones are the proofs that something is needed. I think that matches should not be played under 117ms or 100ms, because the game totally changes under that. And also high lag situations should be managed in a better way. C4ill said his idea is a coin toss where the winner hosts and set the latency, and I added that the loser would choose who will serve as first. But this still isn't really right, because a match can really be a coin toss in this way.

I'd really like to write your opinions about this topic. Thank you for reading!

[VMoe86]

@inseedious: Nothing about delay rules will change since there is a way you can play online and offline (in more or less) the same way (except counter shots in delay high at 184 or 200+). This way has been explained in the thread "Delay, Ping and Lag: A Beginner's Guide". Almost all my matches are in 0ms, because I play more offline than online. Let's take a look at my preparation for the match against Richie: My last online match before playing against Richie in QF was on Monday evening, two sets. All other sets this week were offline, where I can also make more mistakes on a given day than on another one -- end of discussion about it, it has nothing to do with Roland Garros (open a separate thread if you want to discuss about it, but any further remark in here will be deleted by me).

Now let's get to business and talk a bit about my Roland Garros so far! I picked Djokovic for this tournament because I felt the most comfortable with him during the clay season -- as nice as Melzer and Davydenko to play with, you are tactically a bit more limited with them.

In R64 I was supposed to play against Mustafa_Federer or so, but he did not show up, WO to next round. Last week then my tournament started on Friday, R32 against Lambdo (Federer). C4iLL praised him a few weeks ago, in their Monte-Carlo match, and I could see a good potential, because he can defend well with Federer, running around the BH nicely, but he lacked weapons to really hurt me and so it was a straight-forward match, three times 6-1.

Two days later, R16 against Nadal_Fan (Djokovic), who gave trouble to some players this season, so I expected more resistance, but in fact Lambdo played better. Nadal_Fan was trying to guess on return of serve, but he was really bad at it compared to Sorauze, easy aces or points for me each time. As it was in the previous round, he lacked consistent weapons, my returns were working very well and off these deep shots he made errors frequently. In the end I reached the QF in a confident way.

From the start of Roland Garros, my goal was to play the QF against Richie (Ferrer) on Friday 13th and that's when it took place. Last year I lost 6-7, 6-7, 6-7 to him, serving for 2nd and 3rd set, having mini-break advantage in first set tie break. I wanted to have another chance against him at this stage and fortunately the Draw made it happed that we could play the QF again -- this time Ferrer vs. Djokovic!

I came well-prepared into this match and was really motivated to give a good performance. The first set was like 2nd and 3rd set last year: I serve for the set, get broken, he stays in the set, breaks again, serves for the set, I save three set points, but he manages to serve it out. It was still encouraging for me, though, I made him work hard.

Summary of first set (credit to IsniperXZ for the image):



At the start of the 2nd set I managed to break early, but when having to consolidate the break, I was down 0-40 quickly. Somehow I dug out of that hole, held, and broke again for, in the end winning this set 6-1 in a way I did not imagine to ever take a set off Richie: I made only 5 or 6 mistakes in the whole set, while he had twice the amount of that, we both had similar number of winners (around 12).

3rd set continued that way, again I made only 5 or 6 faults, played nicely at the net, Richie not knowing what to do (lob!). It was weird situation to be in, 5-7, 6-1, 6-1, I thought "You could have won in straight sets!". At least I did better than the year before.

4th set I started well, up 40-0 on my serve, but then I played a couple of loose points, was down break point and got broken. I told myself "If you do not break back quickly, preserve some energy and do not play on full intensity all the time, but make him earn the set nevertheless." and so that set went: I made more errors, he was making better choices and even when I wanted to go back to full focus at 5-1, he broke me and thus could serve first in the 5th set.

Maybe this was a blessing in disguise, because I put huge effort in to break him in the first game of the 5th set, which I consolidated. When I saw the chance for double break, I knew I had to take it, it was very important for me! So, it all went my way until 4-0. Then I had to reach the finish line, it was painful to see 4-0 lead going to 4-3, 30-30 quite quickly. Then we played a long rally, where I decided to throw in a drop shot, he was too late on it, green error into the net. I held for 5-3, one more hold! The game at 5-3, he was very solid, gave me no hope of breaking him there. The last game of the match, I do not remember that much. First point I made mistake, I think, I hit two aces, but faced break point at 5-4, 30-40, 2nd serve. I decided to kick it a bit to the BH side, he gave a weak return, I went for the BH down the line and hit a winner, an air swing gave me match point then, phew. This was a long rally ending on a winner from my side.

Stats:



Happy about the victory, things went my way tonight, Richie with some uncharacteristic mistakes at times, but he will maybe be happy about losing early, so that he can prepare better for the grass season, looking to win the career slam at Wimbledon! Good luck to him there, while I will have to focus on pidzi's Klizan in the SF and back up this victory.

[C4iLL]

This 4th set and beginning of 5th is exactly what we talked about after our last match

[VMoe86]

RG SF: pidzi (Klizan) defeats VMoe86 (Djokovic) 7-5, 7-6, 7-5

A bit like last year: Beating butcher and then losing 6-7, 6-7, 6-7 to Richie in QF. The main stat of the match is the following: He broke in 6 out of 7 games, me in 4 out of 7 games. I did not have a good start into the match, got broken immediately (had a chance to break back for 3-3) and then found myself a second break down, 2-5. Suddenly it was 5-5, me saving two set points, and I am on serve, 30-30, where I go to the net, his pass attempt touches the net cord and I put the volley a bit out. He takes the break point then and served it out on his third attempt.

In the second set I once again did not have a good start, being broken in my first game, but I recovered it and had chances to take a lead with a break, but it went to a tie break (I had more points in the actual set). The tie break started with me being a mini-break down, which I recovered, but gave away again so that he won the tie break 7-4, same amount of points in the whole set. This was a tough set to lose, but he managed to win it.

3rd set I had a good start, 3-1 up, break point for 4-1 lead, but luck was not with me on the important moments that day and he turned it around with some great play when he had to.

It was not our best match, but it was a very close one (6 points in total made the difference, the match was as long as the one against Richie in the QF), where pidzi was using Klizan's FH really well, me using Djokovic's BH nicely, but for both of us the other sides were not exceptional (I did not feel the FH that well, so that maybe made the difference in the end).

Congrats to him and good luck in the final! Of course I am disappointed, because it was a match I could have won, but I cannot change some decisions during the match anymore and will be trying to win at least one more set than last year at Wimbledon.