1 Response to olymp00dipasquale_federer

1. Voo de Mar says:

   August 2, 2024 at 11:54 am

   Points won by each set: | 43-42, 44-46, 31-23 |
   Points won directly behind the serve:
   26 % Di Pasquale – 18 of 117
   33 % Federer – 38 of 112

   Similarly to the first Bronze medal match in modern tennis history (Paes won that specific match four years before), the winner achieved his incomparably career best result in singles. The story of Di Pasquale is different; Paes, a well established doubles specialist (the best results ahead of him though), was already in the halfway of his singles career given standards at the time, but the 21-year-old Di Pasquale [62] at the beginning. He had already won his first ATP title, at Roland Garros ’99 he reached the fourth round, and defeated the greatest player of the 90s Sampras. In Sydney, en route to the Bronze medal, the long-haired Frenchman overcame as many as four higher ranked players from his generation (New Balls Please), so everything indicated he’d be a leading player of the 00s…. nothing like that happened. A plague of injuries haunted him, and he was unable to get any significant result for almost two years after the Olympics, when as a ‘wild card’ he advanced to the last 16 in Paris again. Unfortunately it wasn’t a resurgence of his career. He couldn’t regain his position of an ATP player, and drifting between Futures and Challengers, decided to quit at the age of 26.
   In the 3rd place match, first meeting against Federer [36], the flat-hitter from France erased a *0:3 deficit in the 1st set tie-break attacking the net thrice, even though he had had just a few attacks before. In the decider (after squandering a 3:0* lead in the 2nd tie-break and a match point at *7:6 – forehand error) he came back from a break down (1:2) and saved a break point at 3-all when Federer netted Di Pasquale’s second serve just trying to keep the ball in court. The Frenchman took MTO leading 3:2 (left leg), in the following game he was barely walking, and that perhaps distracted the inexperienced Federer, for whom it was the first of seven defeats when he won a match point down set, only to be a loser in the end. The 19-year-old Swiss was attacking the net behind his 1st serves throughout the match, occasionally doing it also behind the 2nd.

   [FRA] Di Pasquale’s route to the Bronze medal:
   1 Nicolas Kiefer [GER] 6-4, 6-3
   2 Vladimir Voltchkov [BLR] 6-2, 6-2
   3 Magnus Norman [SWE] 7-6(4), 7-6(2)
   Q Juan Carlos Ferrero [ESP] 6-2, 6-1
   S Yevgeny Kafelnikov [RUS] 4-6, 4-6
   3rd place: Roger Federer [SUI] 7-6(5), 6-7(7), 6-3

   Serve & volley: Di Pasquale 1/1, Federer 18/35

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