Tumble on Petros

What a Sunday it was yesterday. A cold winter morning was followed with some DIY work for our local gardening project and then a royal Sunday lunch, waving goodbye to Jorge and Raquel who are moving back to Portugal.

But this post is mainly about the ATP finals match between Roger and Rafa. I was reminded that the match had started by granpa Jose Luis who I guess was clear who he was supporting. And that’s how the whole match was viewed, with small interruptions to prepare some tea, cater for Diego, clear the mess he was causing and have small chit chat with Los abuelos who Elena was talking to through skype.

While this was happening though and I was losing some of the great points that were happening, I had the chance to watch Roger’s backhand not leaking the usual errors. Actually finishing a protracted exchange by finding an acute and unexpected angle off that side.

I am no tennis coach or expert of that sort but for me that was the big story of this match. Federer was not afraid to take the big shots from that side, was not trying to change side to get a forehand but instead was winning the match from this side. So I was talking with Elena afterwards how does one make this changes? Was it do with the new coach?

Probably it was but the certain change for me was psychological. When watching the Wimbledon 2008 and Nadal dethroning Federer, deservedly so, Nadal was hitting 90% of his serves on federer’s backhand taking away from him his beloved forehand that had given him so many wins. This time I believe he was happy to be playing on his backhand and that was certainly a thing that Nadal was not awaiting and I believe it took away his confidence.

Well bring on 2011 as probably a lot if people are expecting this rivalry has a lot more to give but I for one would like to see new names appear together with these two and win the big titles.

Note: Could very well all be a matter of the surface I’ve very little experience on how the bounce changes when moving to another outdoor surface, but this doesn’t concur with my above discourse so it was pushed as a sidenote.