Indian Wells – Round 1st + 2nd

Very strong field this year at Indian Wells, all Top 20 guys appeared in the sunny American city, unfortunately Gael Monfils [14] withdrew from his 2nd round match due to sickness (food poisoning) as well as his doubles partner Philipp Kohlschreiber. ‘Le Monf’ and ‘Kohli’ lost their doubles match to the Polish duo ‘Frytka & Matka’. Monfils is unlucky lately, due to injury he didn’t play a vital rubber in Davis Cup and skipped tournaments in San Jose and Memphis… Andy Murray is one of the four best players in the world in the last few years, no question about it, but his inconsistency doesn’t allow him to move further in the ATP ranking. From time to time he suffers weird defeats, last year it happened to him three times in ‘1000’ tournaments as he was easily beaten in his opening matches by Young, Bogomolov and Anderson, this time he was stunned by a tricky Guillermo Garcia-Lopez [92]. Murray led 3:2* (40-0) in the 1st set being on a way to a routine win but failed to convert break points and the momentum shifted onto Spaniard’s side. Garcia-Lopez won 6-4, 6-2 saving all seven break points in the night session clash. “I’m not exactly sure why that happened tonight,” Murray said. “I played well in practice. I was hitting the ball really well and I felt pretty fresh. I didn’t move my best tonight, but it didn’t feel like I was moving really badly. My return let me down, and he hardly missed the ball“. Other big boys won their matches without any troubles. Novak Djokovic began his campaign of title defense winning opening match against Golubev, just like a year ago (then dropped four games, this time one game more). Garcia-Lopez’s fellow Spaniard, Albert Ramos [57] achieved a unique result winning back-to-back matches facing a match point (against Levine & Gasquet). Among active players only Nieminen (twice), Davydenko, F.Lopez and Querrey have done it. There were several topsy-turvy sets and matches. Steve Darcis [71] saved three mini match points against Young, and won in the 3rd set tie-break, although he had a 4:0 lead in that set. In his following round, the Belgian won a tie-break against Dolgopolov despite 1:5 down and five set points to save; he was serving for the match at 5:3 (30-15) in the 3rd set, but in the end the Ukrainian notched a dramatic victory 6-7(13), 6-3, 7-5. Darcis has won 15 tie-breaks in a row (counting Challengers)! Nikolay Davydenko managed to erase almost the biggest tennis deficit: *0:5 (15-40) in the 1st set against Bubka in the first round. In the longest “best of 3” match of the year so far, Denis Istomin prevailed against Juan Ignacio Chela (second round) after 3 hours 22 minutes 7-6, 6-7, 7-5. The Argentine saved three match points in the tie-break and squandered a 4:2 lead in the decider, Istomin needed seven match points in total to clinch the match. Michael Llodra was fined $2,500 for verbally abusing a spectator during his first-round match against Ernests Gulbis. Supposedly Llodra shouted “Fucking Chinese!” towards Gulbis’s supporter, later on he explained that isn’t a racist and retired during the second round encounter with Tsonga.