Fish def. Smeets 7-6 6-7 6-3 6-4

Nice effort Smeets after humilation in Melbourne and Paris this year. Fish waits for a winner from Grosjean-Mathieu match.

smeets got some shots but his hand is not connected to his brain.

nice effort from fish to lose that set, i'd say, and if it had went to 5 we'd have a mugs match of the day, even with the hard competition today.

was a good draw for smeets... just a shame he couldnt shake off his mug-ged nature and grow some brass ones for a few hours today...

strange style this smeets. seems very defensive in rallies then rushes the net out of nowhere. I didn't really get to see if he's any good there because fish either blasted a winner or more often, hit the ball about 5 yards out.

fish's fh was as fucking atrocious as usual out there.

fish's fh was as fucking atrocious as usual out there.

Surprisingly he played three forehand winners in first set tie-break.

strange style this smeets. seems very defensive in rallies then rushes the net out of nowhere. I didn't really get to see if he's any good there because fish either blasted a winner or more often, hit the ball about 5 yards out.


was the first time i've seen smeets in full... seems very uncanny indeed... has some skills...

but anyways, i was watching this match and thinking about an article i read about why stoltenberg left the national aussie coaching set up a few years back... one of his main arguments for leaving and setting up a business, literally in his own backyard, was that the system was geared to producing a ton of good players at 150-400 with the hope of one or two cracking the top 100 - where stoltz was just like : wha? lets just see how many top tenners we can make right...?

anyways... while watching smeets, he struck me of just this sort of player... produced for the fringes of a grand slam... no more... i would love to think he'll bloom late like many aussie players do but i dunno...

Pretty good effort for Smeets to get a set. Hopefully he builds from here. i didn't see the match though so can't say if it was fish playing awfully, and that's probably the case.

I find it rather embarrassing to admit that during the duller parts of this match I was quietly humming "Smeets for my smeet, sugar for my honey" to myself, but once you spot a non-existent pun....