Beijing R1 previews and picks: Nadal vs. Giraldo, Ferrer vs. Pospisil

September 30, 2013 Ricky Match previews, Predictions 74

Spaniards Rafael Nadal and David Ferrer will kick off their Beijing campaigns on Tuesday. They are set for respective meetings with Santiago Giraldo and Vasek Pospisil.

(3) David Ferrer vs. Vasek Pospisil

Ferrer and Pospisil will be going head-to-head for the third time in their careers when they clash in round one of the China Open on Tuesday. Both of their previous encounters have gone Ferrer’s way; 6-3, 6-3 on the indoor hard courts of Valencia in 2011 and 6-4, 6-4 last summer on grass at the London Olympics. Pospisil has since soared to his current ranking of No. 40 in the world, which is one spot off his career-high. The 23-year-old Canadian reached the semifinals in Montreal, but he endured heartbreaking defeats in Cincinnati, at the U.S. Open, and in Davis Cup. He is also coming off a second-round loss last week in Kuala Lumpur to Federico Delbonis.

Ferrer is a -600 favorite at william hill tennis odds but only -200 to win in straight sets, in part because the Spaniard is not playing his best tennis at the moment. A U.S. Open quarterfinal run was preceded by early losses in Montreal and Cincinnati, and he fell to Joao Sousa in the Kuala Lumpur quarters. However, Sousa has been on fire of late. He reached the St. Petersburg semis and eventually captured the Kuala Lumpur title. Ferrer is still 47-16 for the year, which includes two titles. As their past history suggests, the world No. 4 is a bad matchup for Pospisil thanks to his remarkable return of serve and defensive skills.

Pick: Ferrer in 2

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(Q) Santiago Giraldo vs. (2) Rafael Nadal

Giraldo and Nadal will be squaring off for the sixth time in their careers on Tuesday. Nadal is 5-0 lifetime in the overall head-to-head series and 10-0 in sets (only one set has progressed to a tiebreaker). They have faced each other four times on hard courts, including their most recent encounter last year in Miami–where Nadal rolled 6-2, 6-0.

Although Giraldo did well to qualify for the main draw in Beijing, there is no reason to expect his week will continue. The 87th-ranked Colombian is just 15-22 this season and he has not won an ATP main-draw match since Atlanta in mid-July. Nadal, of course, is undefeated on hard courts in 2013–with titles in Indian Wells, Montreal, Cincinnati, and at the U.S. Open. The second-ranked Spaniard is well on his way to the year-end world No. 1 ranking, and likely sooner rather than later. This has a straight-set rout written all over it.

Pick: Nadal in 2 losing 5-6 games

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74 Comments on Beijing R1 previews and picks: Nadal vs. Giraldo, Ferrer vs. Pospisil

  3. vamosrafa,

    Yes! Only I won’t be able to see it tomorrow. So I will be relying on you and others to fill me in.

    I am curious to see if Ferrer plays any better in this tournament.

    Oh by the way, should I call you Hasan? 🙂

    Reply

  4. hahaha…whatever you like NNY, I am happy with vamosrafa too 🙂 using vamosrafa has the advantage that everyone (even those not aware of ‘Hasan’) would be able to recognize haha…. I am good with both, whatever you want to call me at any time, most welcome to do it 😉

    And yes sure, I will give you a detailed report 😀

    Reply

  15. vamosrafa,

    I will continue to use your user name on this forum. We all know that you use your real name when writing match previews.

    It’s all good!

    I am looking forward to hearing your thoughts and anyone else who gets to watch Rafa’s first match. It’s frustrating not to be able to see it.

    Reply

  18. Classic Nadal first time out in a tourney. He didn’t exactly storm out of the gates but is steadily playing himself into the match. Piles on the pressure at 4:2 to re-break Giraldo with a scorching CCB to serve for the set. Oh, and served 3 aces.

    Reply

  21. woahh that is what confidence and a 22 match win streak including a slam can do…rafa steps in on a 2nd serve return at BREAK POINT, hammers the return for an off forehand winner ! Rafa usually steps in to hit such big forehand returns when he is down 40-15 or 40-0 on his opponent’s serve…really liked that 😉

    Reply

  22. due to internet connectivity issues, I was not able to watch set 1…. will watch the replay soon..

    ed, was rafa standing on the baseline to return 2nd serves in set 1 too?

    Reply

    • I was interrupted several times during the match so my recall is not to be relied upon.
      but I have the impression he came in most of the time to take the 2nd serve

      Reply

  33. I assume they were asking too much money for the rights to the men’s tournament and the TV channels were not prepared to cough up for the earlier rounds. Why else do we have coverage of the WTA from the kick-off and not the ATP. It’s normal for the 250 events not to be covered until the QFs but I dont recall there being no TV coverage until the last 16 for a 500 event particularly when there is a high level of entry by the top10.

    I wonder what would have happened if Roger had rocked up to play?

    Ricky: Can you throw any light on the matter.

    Reply

      • Well, middle of the week is Wednesday, not Thursday. I can understand showing ATP-250 matches late in the week because not many of the big guys show up at those. But when you have an ATP-500 like the China Open which is heavily patronised byt he big boys, surely they can start TV at the Round of 16 stage, which would be tomorrow?

        Reply

      • rafaisthebest@October 1, 2013 at 1:27 pm

        I wanted to emphasize: ‘it is usual’.
        For example, TennisTV.com starts to show the ATP-500 events:
        Tokyo – 3 Oct 2013, Thursday
        Basel – 22 Oct 2013, Tuesday
        Valencia Open – 24 Oct 2013, Thursday
        Rotterdam – 13 Feb 2014, Thursday
        Dubai – 24 Feb 2014, Monday
        Rio Open – 20 Feb 2014, Thursday
        Acapulco- 26 Feb 2014, Wednesday (the final is on Saturday)
        Barcelona – 24 Apr 2014, Thursday
        Hamburg – 17 Jul 2014, Thursday

        Reply

  35. And will somebody explain
    a) why anybody should want to bring a baby to a tennis tournament
    b) why they are allowed to come in with a young baby
    c) why, when it starts crying, they don’t leave immediately

    I cant imagine anything more distracting as you’re about to serve than a child wailing just behind you.

    Reply

  36. ^^^^^^ Precisely. Always thought there was a niche marketing opportunity for a surrogate granny agency to cater for people who haven’t got one on hand to dump the baby with.

    Reply

  37. augusta08, 1:44pm;

    I think it’s because we have been “starved” of live tennis, it seems like the USO was such a long time ago…………..

    Anyway, hope Rafa gets past Khols without too much fuss tomorrow so we can watch him live on Friday. I have a sneaky feeling they will not show the final live on Sunday, but delayed…………….

    Reply

    • rafaisthebest@October 1, 2013 at 1:53 pm
      —I have a sneaky feeling they will not show the final live on Sunday—

      On TennisTV.com there are two possibilities: live coverage or blackouts in certain territories
      As for the China Open, the blackout applies in China.

      Reply

  38. Oh dear, Ferru drops the 2nd set……..

    I have a feeling Ferru is well on his way out of the Top 10, and this may happen in 2014…..

    Reply

  39. My posts are disappearing again. If I don’t post, that’s why.
    This link works for the China Open:

    sports.uusee.com/live

    Reply

  41. Gussy: I’d always assumed it was just in France transmissions didn’t start till mid-week.

    So why then is the WTA covered in full? It must boil down to the cost of acquiring TV rights.

    Reply

  42. I watched Rafa’s match, switching between 2 streams. I had a choice between a European stream where the quality of the picture was relatively low (compared to HD), with no commentary but audio from the crowd, and no commercials. Or, I could choose the Chinese television station, with the Chinese commentary and all of the commercials (I think it was CCTV5), but better picture quality. Mostly I stayed with CCTV5 due to higher picture quality. For those of you who have ESPN3, they’ll be streaming live mens’ matches later in the week and screen quality for ESPN3 is excellent. The Tennis Channel isn’t showing any of the mens’ matches live on regular broadcast TV, not even the final. Everything will be on tape delay.
    The match itself: Rafa seemed somewhat lethargic at times. His first serve percentage was poor and sometimes he was missing by a mile. Giraldo tried as often as he could to hit flat, hard, deep shots. A few of his shots were real bullets. He had some success with that. I came away from the match feeling like what Rafa really needs is a good night’s sleep.

    Reply

  43. Yeah only served at 56% and Rafa was broken twice in the 1st round. Far cry from his Cincy and USO numbers.

    Will need to be (and will be) better vs. Kholschreibaah.

    #RustCheck
    #DavidHasselhoff

    Reply

    • Rafa admits to feeling nervous at the outset of important tournaments and think how often he’s shredded our nerves during the early rounds. This may be only a 500-event but there is a lot hanging on the result. Besides it’s rare to see Rafa playing his best tennis against bantam weight players.

      He’ll up the anti come tomorrow.

      Reply

  45. Paradoxically, this whole sorry business with his father could be the making of Bernard.
    Prior to the debacle he was the epitome of a spoilt, arrogant brat with his wild and often obnoxious behaviour and was in danger of torpedoing his career. Now he’s having to stand on his own two feet and already comes across as being much more mature.

    Reply

  47. good point by Jpacnw…

    I thought rafa returned well…it seems that he is trying to make it a permanent habit to return 2nd serves by standing on the baseline … He is so much more comfortable now with that forehand return on the add court…i was not happy with his return positioning in the USO final but rafa was may be too nervous to implement the aggressive ROS..

    I think we are going to see more of this tomorrow..He will retreat back when its not working or he faces some one who has a massive kick serve like Isner or JJ..

    Rafa’s serve was ok…he hit a few really good ones and he is going for that serve out-wide to the righty’s forehand on the duece court so much more often now .. I will be interested to see how accurate he serves because I thought the serve lacked accuracy in that USO final and a lot of them were in nole’e strike zone which allowed nole to dictate in sets 2 and 3… I liked the ROS and serve against nole in montreal more..

    The groundies were good..he had the intent to be aggressive and produced some good aggressive forehands…backhand had decent length on it….consistency in his aggression is what we will be looking for ,rafa ! Not the best of performances but I would say a decent start after some time off…

    Reply

  48. vamosrafa,

    Thanks for posting your thoughts. I read some comments on vb indicating that Rafa was not at his best. Someone here said that espn3 will be showing the matches. But I don’t know if anyone is showing anything before Thursday.

    I checked out the stats. Rafa’s serve stats were not great. But I guess that is to be expected in his first match. He was serving some aces. I am pleased to hear that he is standing on the baseline to return serve. I think that will be a key on these courts.

    At some point I will get to see him. I think the tennis channel will only be showing it on a tape delay. I know that they start on Thursday. The poor tv coverage is beyond frustrating.

    Reply

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