Archives 2007 - Tournament Recap

We are lucky to have this

Impressions of the week obviously focus around Johansson. A grand slammer comes to Binghamton. A good fit for him, he gets more matches without sitting out a week (doing nothing but practice)... he doesn't win out for money or rankings. Well, rankings is a tricky one... he did pretty well last year our same week in the Canadian Masters; so he ends up dropping 75 points from that, but he picks up 55 for coming here and winning it. Net loss is 20 total points ... so he goes down from here but only 2 ranking spots to 72.

Shortest match... the Okun/Sarstrand one. 48 minutes it took to complete.

Longest match was Guez/Simmonds at 2 hours, 43 minutes.

Most aces for a player was actually Vemic in that final... 18 in 2 sets.

Noteables:

Professionalism of many players out there. Many guys sticking to just playing.

Vemic diving for volleys on the hard court, twice. Vemic's energy got the fans into it. Ironically, his favorite player growing up was Stefan Edberg. Interesting how Vemic dictated his finesse on many of his opponents... Warburg, Kuznetsov, and Johansson surely approached the net a lot more than usual in their match against Vemic.

Great matches included Sweeting/Johansson, Johansson/Okun, Guez/Simmonds.

Rosol-similarities to Lendl, Bourgeois- similarities to Rafter.

All the special events went off well, becoming a more and more well rounded event. Charities benefited well... Alex's lemonade stand did very well in its inaugural post at Rec Park.

Wish we hadn't seen it:

-A player making the chair and player wait about 4 minutes for the coin toss while he sits and does nothing. Complete arrogance and hard to understand.

-A player complaining to a fan about pretzel wrappers being too loud while the fan fetches 'em from the bag.

Quotes from Thomas:

Did you have a special game plan coming into the match with Dusan's different style?

It was extremely tough to play Dusan. He's serving rockets a lot today and some very different shots for the game these days and he was making them and that is why he was in the final.

Is this how you would have scripted the week coming here to Binghamton?

Yeah, this could not be better. I've had a lot of very tough matches and I got thru those and I think this will help me a lot for New Haven and the US Open.

How does this experience help going forward and how is it different?

Well it has been a different experience in many ways. Its been a while since I've had pasta before the match in an RV, but all the people involved in the tournament have been working extremely hard and if we had this type of hard work all over the tour, we'd have a lot better tour for sure. For me, its been a great experience to be here.

You said at the end there that he plays very different, how is Dusan different?

He makes drop shots, he makes balloon balls, he hits it very hard, he hits with a lot of topspin, and it is very tough to control. It's a lot easier to play a guy that plays solid from both sides and gives you some rhythm and that is why Dusan played so well here, he took guys out of their game including me today, at times.

How were you able to combat that?

We (my coach and I) said today that it was more important to play solid than any other time of the week. He had set points both on my serve and in the tiebreak, but in all the important point I feel like I stepped up today.

Earlier in the week on the day with matches against Jenkins and Wilson.

What is your own assessment of your game at this point?

Hard to find my game again. I've been playing well in practice, but I've been unable to produce the same tennis in matches. Today was a tough match, he played well and it came down to just a few points."

What would make this week a success for you?

"To win it, of course. To get 5 good matches."

Commenting on having Magnus Norman as a coach, Thomas basically said that it is an advantage having a former world #2 able to hit in practice. Also, you may have noticed, these 2 won the 14s European championships together... so they have known each other a while. Its a pretty good story... when Magnus commented on it, he said that "if it were anybody other than Thomas, probably wouldn't do it. When Thomas asked, it worked out well for my 'regular job' so I said sure; he is a good friend and I've known him a long time."

You could easily pick up on the good friendship and respect there. Magnus' "regular" job is in marketing/finance for ... you guessed it, the Swedish Tennis Federation. Magnus also gave us some other info on some other well known Swedes... he said Stefan Edberg is a heck of a squash player. Mats Wilander was Thomas' favorite player growing up, he's now his Davis Cup captain.

They'll all see each other when Sweden hosts the United States in September. Now there is a bit more to watch when we root for Andy, James, and the Bryans... nobody will see if you wear the blue and yellow signed Tshirt.