October 27, 2024

Open Court

MORE TENNIS THAN YOU'LL EVER NEED

It’s the day after the end of Wimbledon.

And there are no less than SIX ATP and WTA Tour events starting today, five of them on clay and four in total on the ATP side of things.

And this is the day when Rafael Nadal hits Bastad, Sweden for the first time since 2005, in a doubles debut with Casper Ruud.

Ruud channels his inner Nadal during the coin tos before their doubles match in Bastad.

Nadal hasn’t played a competitive match in about six weeks, since he lost in the first round of Roland Garros to eventual finalist Alexander Zverev.

He played Bastad three straight years back in the day – the old days: 2003, 2004, 2005.

That last year, he won it. A look at his draw tells you how he’s the last of his breed..

As an aside, the fact that he was even playing there was off the charts.

He had already won Monte Carlo, Barcelona, Rome – and Roland Garros (for the first time, over Mariano Puerta in the final).

Nadal lost in the second round of Wimbledon to Gilles Muller. But then he went right to Batad, won that, and then to Stuttgart – then on clay – and won that.

And then, a few weeks later, he switched it to hard court in Montreal – and won THAT. Nadal went 79-10 that season in singles, with 11 titles including Madrid, which was then a hard-court event held in October. He also went 19-8 in doubles. That’s 116 matches in total in 2005.

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Monday: tennis everywhere

Here are the schedules and results for a very busy Monday on the ATP Tour in Hamburg, Bastad, Gstaad and Newport, and the WTA Tour in Palermo and Budapest.

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First-ever meeting between Nadal and … Borg!

Two of the singles wild cards at the Nordea Open in Bastad, Sweden this week (it’s normally a quiet, sleepy little post-Wimbledon clay-court event, but not this year with the Olympics) are Rafael Nadal and … Leo Borg.

Yes, the son of Bjorn, who is grinding his way up the ranks, slowly, and mostly on the ITF circuit.

Open Court predicted they would draw each other in the first round. Because that’s the way the draw gods work.

And, SURE enough, that’s exactly what happened after the two practiced together on Friday.

The two already know each other, as Leo Borg was able to meet Nadal – who was his idol as a kid – through Borg’s Laver Cup captaincy.

Nadal is also playing doubles – first up on the stadium court Monday with another guy you might have heard of: Casper Ruud.

Meanwhile, Borg (the younger) has a wild card into the doubles with William Rejchtman Vinciguerra, whose last name also rings a bell in Swedish tennis.

The 17-year-old, who played the juniors at Wimbledon last week and is ranked No. 35 in the ITF Junior rankings, is the nephew of Andreas Vinciguerra, who got to No. 33 in the ATP Tour rankings back in 2001 and, during that period, was a rare bright spot in a Swedish tennis scene that had been spoiled for a long, long time.

Both are lefties; Vinciguerra the elder, now 42, was an excellent player who was absolutely BESET by injuries during his career.

I guess you could call Borg and Vinciguerra them the “Nepo Babies” of tennis.

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No Ferrero in Paris for Alcaraz

According to Marca, coach Juan Carlos Ferrero will not be with his double-Grand Slam champion Carlos Alcaraz in Paris for the Olympic tennis event.

Instead, Alcaraz will have Davis Cup captain David Ferrer on the bag (so to speak), along with his agent Albert Molina.

(The Marca bio for Molina, who last performed those duties back in 2021 right around this time of year in Kitzbuel, is hilarious. “He holds a Bachelor’s degree in physical education and a Master’s degree in tennis”, who started in the business as a physical trainer for a number of female tennis players including Conchita Martinez Granados – whom he later married).

Alcaraz’s record when Ferrero is absent is patchy. Notably at the Australian Open this year, and in Toronto last year, he seemed a little bit at sea.

Ferrero, per Marca, will travel to Paris as a guest if Alcaraz goes deep.

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Davis Cup – already???

No wonder time seems to go by too fast. No sooner Wimble-done – and summer barely begun – than already nations are announcing their Davis Cup rosters for the finals preliminaries …. which will be held Sept. 10-15, after the US Open.

This is why we can’t have nice things.

First up: Great Britain, the “host” nation in Manchester, won’t have Andy Murray. But they will have Jack Draper, Cameron Norrie, Dan Evans and doubles specialists Joe Salisbury and Neal Skupski.

Spain won’t have Rafael Nadal. But they will have that Energizer Bunny – Carlos Alcaraz – along with Roberto Bautista Agut, the returning Pablo Carreño Busta, and No. 1 doubles specialist Marcel Granollers.

They’ll be in Valencia as the “home” squad in the pool of death along with Australia, France and Czechia.

Argentina, which will play in Manchester, will have Sebastian Baez, Tomas Etcheverry, Francisco Cerundolo and doubles specialists Andres Molteni and Maximo Gonzalez.

Argentina are in a pool with Canada, Finland and Great Britain.

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Do you REALLY want to play tennis?

Of all the places to be this week to play tennis, you might not necessariliy pick Palermo, Sicily.

While the WTA tournament itself is a lovely event in a lovely place – and it bagged two excellent wild cards preparing for the Paris Olympics in Zheng Qinwen and Karolina Muchova – it’ll be … steamy.

Here’s what it looks like this week.

Ooof. Especially in contrast to the cold and rain that were the feature of both WImbledon and Roland Garros.

That said, they only start at 5:30 p.m. local time. (Not that, as you can see by the chart, it’s any cooler).

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Dominic Thiem is back

Thiem during his second-round qualifying match in Paris, with a full house watching his defeat to Otto Virtanen.

The end of Dominic Thiem’s career is happening in fits and starts.

Currently ranked No. 133, Thiem has played just five matches since losing in the first round in Munich to Alejandro Moro Canas in mid-April.

He lost in the final round of qualifying in Madrid, 6-1, 6-3 to Thanasi Kokkinakis a week later. And he lost in the second round of qualifying at Roland Garros to Otto Virtanen.

A month later, he lost in the first rond of the Mallorca grass-court tournament to Gaël Monfils (an unfortunate draw). It’s a club where he’s a member and has a relationship with the tournament, which gave him a nice ceremony.

But he’s back this week in Gstaad, where he’ll play qualifier Juan Pablo Varillas in the first round Monday afternoon.

Thiem won Gstaad back in 2015. nd he made the semifinals there two years ago – beating Varillas in the quarterfinals before losing to Matteo Berrettini in the semis.

It can’t be easy to train and stay motivated when you’re not playing much, and when the countdown has loudly begun towards the end.

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