Game, Ms. Noelle: my musings on pro tennis

Saturday, November 19, 2005

Single-handed Beating

In the first semifinal match at the Tennis Masters Cup tonight, Roger Federer force-fed Gaston Gaudio a double bagel worthy of Princess Leia's hairdo. Poor Gaudio; after outlasting Fernando Gonzalez last night, he couldn't do much against a fully-awake and aggressive Federer. The Swiss is through to the final for the third time in three years. Should he win that, he will take home $1.52 million in prize money as undefeated winner.

Here's an interesting piece of trivia about this year's Masters Cup. (I originally posted this on Tennis Warehouse.) The players who actually played through their round-robin matches were Roger Federer, Guillermo Coria, Nikolay Davydenko, David Nalbandian, Ivan Ljubicic, Gaston Gaudio, Mariano Puerta, and Fernando Gonzalez. Out of these eight players, only three use a double-handed backhand (Coria, Davydenko, and Nalbandian). The five other players use a single-handed backhand.

If the four players who withdrew hadn't done so, however, the field would look like this: Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Andy Roddick, Lleyton Hewitt, Nikolay Davydenko, Andre Agassi, Guillermo Coria, and Marat Safin. Out of those eight, only Federer uses a single-handed backhand.

Now, in the other semifinal of Davydenko versus Nalbandian, both players use a double-handed backhand. Either of them could meet Federer in the final. Should Federer win the title for the third time, it would lend a different meaning to the phrase "single-handedly beating the opposition," wouldn't it?

UPDATE: It's a carb-loading spree: Nalbandian handed Davydenko his first loss of a set, and it was in the form of a bagel. However, Davydenko served and won the first game of the second set, so there won't be another double-bagel tonight. Nalbandian won the semifinal 6-0,7-5 and moves into the final versus Federer.

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

*salutes federer* um... i dont normally do this - but holy hell.. good job roger!

um...... why doesnt andy ever double bagel (or even get any bagel) top 10 players??

8:37 PM 
Blogger Noelle De Guzman said...

I'm tempted to say that Federer didn't do anything special since Gaudio's been bageled thrice this year (twice to Rafael Nadal, once to Tomas Berdych). The fact remains, though, that to hand a person two bagels in a match is extremely hard to do.

Federer won the match in 49 minutes, winning 55 points to Gaudio's 25. ( http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/showpost.php?p=649937&postcount=130 )

Andy needs to improve his service return so he can break more serves per set. At the same time, he needs to tighten up his service games so he doesn't lose serve.

8:52 PM 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wow this post about Single Handed backhands is pretty lame.

2:51 AM 
Blogger Noelle De Guzman said...

Well, it was an excuse to talk about a particular fact and possibility that I thought was interesting.

Maybe next time you could write me some constructive criticism, like what I should have done differently, instead of just posting "this... is pretty lame." You know, that kind of comment is pretty lame.

9:59 AM 

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