Roland Garros - Day 9

First topic message reminder :

Thought I would start this early and allow some discussion to take place:

Andy Murray v Richard Gasquet. Interestingly enough Gasquet in their 3 meetings in Slams has never defeated Andy. Though Richard won their recent meeting in Rome.

Rafael Nadal v Juan Monaco. Juan has his work cut out. Never taken a set off Nadal on clay in 3 meetings. Needs a career best performance if he is to compete.

Janko Tipsarevic v Nicolas Almagro. Never met. This shall prove to be the most intriguing match of the day. Almagro being the better clay player should start as favourite.

David Ferrer v Marcel Granollers. The one meeting on Clay was a straight sets win for Ferrer. Have a feeling this might be tighter affair.

Tsonga/Wawrinka and Berdych/Del Potro shall continue where they left off.

I would put the womens up but the WTA website is being crap!

Predictions anyone?

This tweet from Ben Rothenberg (writer for New York Times - note unbiased as not British or French).

Deja vu from second round in this match. Andy Murray pushes a button on his back and his opponent self destructs. Q would be proud.

https://twitter.com/#!/benrothenberg

Pfttt!

trouble with Gasquet is I honestly believe to beat one of the top players in a slam he needs to do it in straight sets. Afterwards he just runs out of gas, and more importantly, self belief. The amount of times he has lost a match from two sets up is alarming for a player of his quality.

Murray may have used some gamesmanship to take the second set (I didn't see it, but if indeed he didn't aknowledge a net chord winner that is disappointing), but Gasquet shouldn't have let it affect him as badly as it did. You sensed he didn't believe he could win the game from one set all, which is ridiculous.

One more thought: Murray seems to thrive on being "riled". Not grouchy, but he uses what he sees as injustices to gee himself up, and plays much better afterwards. It seems to be what happened here: Murray annoyed at Gasquet questioning his word (for the record Mike, the one later on he didn't call "out", just looked at the mark with a wry grin on his face until the umpire came to check the mark - maybe that was his payback for Gasquet not conceding the point earlier?) and starts playing better as a result...

Demon Racer wrote:Gasquet was never gonna win. Fact. In all likeliness, he would probably lose from being 6-0 6-0 5-0 40-0 up. Note sarcasm...

Murray was decent nothing more.

Can be beat Ferrer? Yeah why not? So what if Ferrer's only dropped 20 odd games. Murray has more game then Ferrer previous victims.

Did you see the last 2 sets? Murray hit something like 30 winners to 5 unforced errors, he completely shut Gasquet out. Super performance.

monty junior wrote:

Demon Racer wrote:Gasquet was never gonna win. Fact. In all likeliness, he would probably lose from being 6-0 6-0 5-0 40-0 up. Note sarcasm...

Murray was decent nothing more.

Can be beat Ferrer? Yeah why not? So what if Ferrer's only dropped 20 odd games. Murray has more game then Ferrer previous victims.

Did you see the last 2 sets? Murray hit something like 30 winners to 5 unforced errors, he completely shut Gasquet out. Super performance.

Yes I watched it...

Its much easier to smash winners against a broken opponent. Gasquet, for me, was screwed after set 2...

I'm a Murray fan, but I agree with Demon Racer here. Gasquet no longer believed he could win once he'd let the second set slip away. Having said that, Murray in the past would maybe have thrown a dodgy service game in there to throw him a lifeline, and there was nothing of the sort here. It really was a superb performance in the last two sets, but now he needs to bring that game from the start against Ferrer.