Adelaide International Tennis Final
I have just finished watching the Adelaide International tennis final between Novak Djokovic and Chris Guccione. Based on rankings you would have given it to Djokovic at the start. As it turned out Guccione played above his ranking and pushed the young 19 year Serbian to 7-5 in the third set.
Guccione is big, he stands at 200 cm or 6′ 7″ on the old scale. His serve is equally big and when he gets into a good rhythm he is hard to stop. He plays a serve volley game. Djokovic by contrast plays the counter puncher and quite often when he looked off balance and out of a point he would thread the needle down the line or play a deft cross court shot to win a point.
After going up 4-2 in the third set Djokovic looked to have the title in the bag however at this stage Guccione lifted and got a break back. Momentum had now changed and Guccione looked a show before Djokovic also lifted his game and came up with some brilliant shots.
With the victory I heard Djokovic will move up two spots in the rankings to number 14 while Guccione should make a good move towards the top 100. The buzz of Guccione doing so well this week was slightly tempered by the news that he has drawn Rafael Nadal in the Sydney tennis event that started today. Hopefully he can spring a surprise on Nadal who will be tired from his long flight from the middle east. We have seen big names fall early in Sydney before.
One thing I found interesting with the Adelaide tennis event was the round robin format used by the ATP. The ATP will test three round robin formats at select circuit events in 2007. I look forward to comments on the round robin format.
Here is what the players said after the final in Adelaide.
Djokovic: ” This is my third title and my fourth final and this is a very special win for me. This has been great preparation for the Australian Open”
Guccione: “Novak played well and I have to congratulate him, bit I’m still a little dissapointed I could not get over the line.
I didn’t want to rally with him because he is so consistent”.