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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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.
ed251137@October 1, 2013 at 3:37 pm
—why then..—
I don’t know. I’m just a viewer. 🙂
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.
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
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.
“Tomic dad banned from Australian Open ”
http://www.foxsports.com.au/tennis/tomic-dad-banned-from-australian-open/story-e6frf4mu-1226731210165?from=public_rss
Thank goodness……..
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.
Nadal vs. Kohlschreiber preview – https://tenngrand.com/2013/10/01/beijing-r2-previews-and-picks-nadal-vs-kohlschreiber-fognini-vs-hewitt/
I think it’s Ferrer, but in a close 3 sets, and Rafa will lose only 4-5 games.
good post-match call on Ferrer. relatively close on Rafa.
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…
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.
Try sports.uusee.com/live
My posts are disappearing again.