Even though I can’t be there, I’m still following the happenings at the Rogers Cup in
Soderling rounds out your top 5. He also made it through to the third round, but not without a fight. Ernests Gulbis, the young Latvian, kept up with Soderling well into the third set. Steve Tignor, one of my very favorite tennis journalists, interviewed Gulbis after his defeat and wrote an excellent piece that can be found at http://tennisworld.typepad.com/thewrap/2010/08/whatever-happens.html. Honestly, I’ve never paid that much attention to Ernests Gulbis. Every once in a while, he pops up on my radar and then disappears for a while. Apparently he’s the second coming of Marat Safin, and it’s probably not clear from my blog, but I really miss Marat. He was one of my favorite players to watch, sometimes because he was unbelievably talented, and sometimes because he was wildly unpredictable. Everyone loves a bad boy, and Marat was the quintessential tennis bad boy. He partied too much; he got in fights, and broke more rackets than anyone could count. What other player has shown up to a tournament with a black eye from a bar fight? It’s true, after watching several interviews with Ernests and seeing him in person, he does share several qualities with Safin. There are far worse players he could be compared to. People are quick to criticize, but Safin won two Grand Slams. You may say he was capable of more, but who cares? Most players would kill for what he achieved, and he managed to have a good time doing it. Who are we to scold him for it? Back to Ernests, the first thing that struck me from the interviews was that he sounds exactly like Safin. Gulbis is from
I like Ernests Gulbis. He has an interesting game when he can get it to work and his casual personality makes him seem like the guy next door. If I had to choose a tennis player to hang out with, this guy would definitely be on my short list. He manages to be funny even in English, which is very difficult for the players who speak it as a second language and he doesn’t care what other people think (the pervasive opinion is that he is merely lazy.) You almost wouldn’t know he was a tennis player. At an ATP tournament, even someone who’s never watched tennis can pick out most of the players. Hint: they’re the tall, fit ones, traveling with an entourage and carrying giant racket bags. I saw Ernests on Sunday morning in
I didn’t mean to dedicate this whole article to one player, but this guy’s been getting a lot of attention again, and I’m intrigued. In other news, the Rogers Cup has lost some fan favorites already. David Ferrer, Tommy Robredo, Feliciano Lopez, Fernando Verdasco, Gilles Simon, Janko Tipsarevic, and Sam Querrey are all out. It's worth noting that Janko Tipsarevic, who's had a pretty good few weeks, hurt his ankle and has since pulled out of Cincinnati. Hopefully he'll be alright for the US Open. I don’t think it makes much of a difference though because everyone wants to see what happens with our top 4. They’re what matters. They do have some threats though, like an in form David Nalbandian, who’s been on an absolute tear lately.
As a parting thought, I just have to mention how confused I am every time I look at the
In completely unrelated news, Dmitry Tursunov, pictured above with Gulbis, was awarded a wild card entry into the Binghampton challenger event this week, but was disqualified when he arrived late for his first match. If he's looking to get back to the top 20, he's going to have to remember to actually show up for his matches. Dmitry is another guy who is quite funny to listen to and he has an excellent twitter account. He often responds directly to fans with questions or comments. You can follow him on twitter @TursunovTales.
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