A remarkable choke by Monfils, he got broken serving for the match in the 3rd after not having problems in his serve at all. If I remember correctly, he only had one break point saved before that. Dr. Isner had a great tournament this week, I guess he has spent too much time on court for the final to be competitive but adrenaline may keep him up.
Bloody hell i didn't expect this to happen! I only watched a few of the beginning games of this and by god i'm nos surprised it went to 3 tiebreaks cos Isner's serve was like a bullet! Monfils was nearly stood with the line judges!! Jesus christ, well done to John though
As I experienced, standing far behind the baseline when returning big serves gives you a little bit more time, but you are easier to be sliced off or kicked off the court (because you leave him so much angle to work with), you are in defence right away and then you can quickly be toast
If your opponent isnt good at using those serves, just bombing it flatter down the middle, then you can comfortable stand 5m behind the baseline
I'm not saying he didn't choke, but Monfils also has improved a lot in a very short time lately, he is still working on the technical changes in his serve and it seems pretty normal it is vulnerable in key moments.
He's mentioned in interviews before (= not as an excuse for yesterday) that Benhabiles keeps telling him all day long new things he has to pay attention to by serving and sometimes he just loses the plot and his serve falls apart.
I've just seen the fragments from this match (thx to nouf ) and I must say Isner's groundstrokes aren't a comedy. He has better play from the baseline than Arthurs at the age of 28 when he came out of nowhere with aces and tie-breakers. Isner is slow but has great speedup from the forehand.
we currently have a top 10 with the exception of roddick who really dont serve all that big, so i will never understand all these posts conetemplating the death of tennis because of guys like isner and karlovic. I actually like the fact that we have some old school fast court players who can serve big and hit huge shots rather than the same laborious grinding rallies that we have become so used to in the post sampras era.
It would be nice if we could get a guy like isner or karlovic into the top 10 who has enough balls to serve big on the important points, and to progress through later stages of slams. I think it would make for some very interesting matchups and great drama...rather than say have robredo and davydenko just get outrallied by federer and nadal ALL THE TIME. I like these guys like isner or pim pim who are unpredictable and make tennis interesting by being a huge threat even for the top guns.
I need to start reading Monfils' interviews more often :lol:
From SI.com:
Gael Monfils
Erratic Frenchman reaches D.C. semis before losing to Isner in -- yes -- a third-set tie-breaker. Then he delivers this gem of a quote: "I'm not arrogant, but ... it's tough when you are so better than another guy and then he beats you."
Yeah, Monfils is so better than Isner at falling over and injuring himself every second match.
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