Alex Dolgopolov appreciation thread

[Total Power]

What a little beauty with an unusual game.Big weapons, great movement, good serve, huge groundstokes...doesnt really have a weakness.While i am on the bandwagon already the question is, will he turn out to be like Gulbis? or can he take the next step forward?He said his strength is clay...looking forward to see him on clay against the clay monster.

 

[Kaan]

His weakness is his consistency

Very frustrating to watch him, he'll be playing top 5 tennis followed by shots that make half way up the net

 

[Total Power]

His weakness is his consistency

Very frustrating to watch him, he'll be playing top 5 tennis followed by shots that make half way up the net

this is his first big tournament.Surely you dont expect him to win the tournamemnt? he gave Murray one hell of a scare and Murray arguably is one of the best reterivers in the game.He is only 22 and will improve here

 

[Dagger5]

He would be a very scary proposition for pretty much every player but kaan is right about his consistancy. He will probably have many more big upsets but not win too many tournaments.

 

[Total Power]

He would be a very scary proposition for pretty much every player but kaan is right about his consistancy. He will probably have many more big upsets but not win too many tournaments.

sure he is a bit inconsistent, but he is not overwhelmed by the ocassion or the opponent.A lot of players would have choked today like Wawrinka or Cilic.His shot selection is still not good,but the guy was ranked out of top 200 last year this time, but he has the right tools to win him a grandslam. With federer dominance coming to an end, he can sure go deep in the majors.

 

[Kaan]

this is his first big tournament.Surely you dont expect him to win the tournamemnt? he gave Murray one hell of a scare and Murray arguably is one of the best reterivers in the game.He is only 22 and will improve here

It was a good effort no doubt.

Would've liked to see Ferrer vs Dolgopolov in the semi, would be unexpected.

 

[puntnut]

He needs a haircut first.

 

[Samuel Newman]

I hope he can replicate his performance from the last two weeks. Not only does he have a great style to watch but he has had to battle with a rare blood disorder.

http://tennisworld.typepad.com/tennisworld/2010/08/tk-8.html

NEW YORK—What kind of a man does it take to receive a kick second serve at ad-in (after multiple deuces) from the No. 12 player in the world and No. 10 seed at this U.S. Open and return it with a drop shot, the way Alexandr Dolgopolov did while facing David Ferrer here today?

Well, a brave one. Or maybe an incredibly gifted one. Or someone who's just plain dumb.

Then again, maybe it takes a guy who's feeling so ill he knows he can't string together more than two or three shots without feeling dizzy and incapacitated—a guy who's had a rare blood disorder from birth, one which is sometimes activated when he crosses a string of time zones and usually winds up forcing him to take intravenous medication and pills, and demands a severe change of diet (eliminating fried foods, salt and gassy beverages, among other things) coupled with a few weeks of utter rest.

I have to admit, I was having fun with all of the obvious options while watching Dolgolopov at work on Court 7 against Ferrer, and the truth, when I learned it, was—and I don't mean to be callous—a buzz-kill. But let me tell the story from the start.

Dolgopolov is a 21-year-old from Kiev, in the Ukraine. His father, Oleksandar, is a former ATP-grade player from back in the days of the USSR. He had scant opportunity to travel outside Russia and thus retired at around the age of 24, shortly after the son named after him was born (the younger Dolgopolov has since officially changed his first name to Alexandr, having grown irritrated by people who insisted on calling him "Olek"). The elder Dolgopolov became a coach and helped develop the former Top 5 ATP pro and French Open runner-up Andrei Medvedev. At the age of 3, his son was swinging racquets and rollling balls while his father trained Medvedev, and one thing led to another.

I've been hearing a lot of good things about Dolgolopov, often with a liberal use of words like "amazing," or "unbelievable," or "insane." He's up to No. 45 now, and so far this year he's beaten a pile of good players, including Mikhail Youzhny, Fernando Gonzalez and Alberto Montanes. He was a semifinalist at Queens Club, and at Wimbledon he lost to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the second round, 10-8 in the fifth. Dolgo played Ferrer a few weeks ago in Cincinnati, losing 6-4 in the third.

So I made a point of catching his re-match with Ferrer in the company of Eban Harrell, a buddy who works for Time magazine, here from London on a busman's holiday. Court 7 was sparsely populated when we flopped down onto the hot aluminum bench shortly before the match started. Dolgopolov was dressed in a regal purple jersey with short white sleeves, and sporting a hairdo that a WTA pro might envy: a subtle headband swept back his long hair, which was collected in the back in a pony tail, above which was a separate, substantial bun.

Dolgo has a light, confident tread; he walks with his chest flung out, bathed in what appears to be an air of entitlement. In fact, with his sharp, feminine features and hair-do, he rather resembled a Medici, or one of those other Renaissance personages vain enough to commission a portrait by a Da Vinci or Michaelangelo.

The impression was probably heightened by the manner of his opponent. Ferrer, dressed in conventional tennis whites with red trim, has a purposeful walk. He keeps his head down and his back is slightly hunched. This is a guy who's on his way to do something, although it's hard to imagine it being anything important. Honey, would you go down to the store to pick up a quart of milk?

Dolgopolov opened the ball with a quick hold, and you don't know "quick" until you watch this kid. His service motion is ultra-fast. It begins with an odd, subtle flinch and knee bend and he immediately flings himself into the shot, feet simultaneously leaving the ground. Blink and you miss it all.

On his groundstrokes, Dolgo generates incredible racquet-head speed, and still finds time to adjust in myriad ways to the flight of the ball; it's as if he's loathe to allow the stick to travel the same path twice. Guys as nimble as him rarely have such a varied repertoire. Ferrer, for example, is so fleet that his legs do most of the critical work. He has solid, reliable strokes, but they're pro forma. Dolgo is unpredictable and explosive in a way that Ferrer is not, and nobody—but nobody—is so precariously perched on the cusp of abandon when he unloads.

By around the fifth game, it was also obvious that Dolgopolov is also shockingly careless. He'd paint the line with one atomic forehand, then drill the next one into the fence. He appeared to have no plan beyond hitting the crap out of the ball. Not that this wasn't entertaining. Au contraire. We happened to be sitting near a gaggle of Desperate Tennis Housewives from New Jersey, and after Dolgo hit a screaming forehand winner from 10-feet behind the baseline, one of them simply cried out, "Good God!"

Ferrer, softly hissing 'mos, 'mos, after each winner, broke Dolgo twice from 2-2 to win the first set, with plenty of help from the opponent. By that time I was already toying around with headlines: Entitled, but Clueless? The Contortionist? In the second set, I kept track of how many rally strokes (points following the serve and return) were played in each point. I had a grand total of four by the time the score climbed to 30-40 (fewer than one stroke per point), although the five-stroke exchange that yielded the break for Ferrer ruined the percentage.

Of course, any time you can keep Ferrer from turning a match into a rallying contest you're onto something, even if it isn't always good. Dolgo's exuberant, let-it-roll strategy is highly appealing when it's matched against the steady Ferrer, who plays with all the joy of a graverobber. Refusing to submit to baseline torture of the kind Ferrer likes to inflict is a somewhat principled stand, and if it's executed at a sufficiently high level, it can bend a guy like Ferrer, who's obsessed with consistency and rhythm, right out of shape. But Dolgo was simply too erratic. At one point late in the second set, Eban turned, a puzzled look on his face, and said: "This is stupid."

And it only got worse, but for one last glimmer of genius from Dolgopolov. At one point late in the third set, he hit a drop shot. Ferrer, scrambling forward, dug the ball out and lobbed over Dolgo's backhand side, causing him to leap as if to hit a backhand overhead. But at the very last moment, he flattened the face of the racket and, still airborn, lightly flicked a lob of his own over Ferrer's head for a clean winner.

When it was over (Ferrer won 2-2-3), I felt like I'd just sat through the worst tennis match I'd ever had the misfortune to witness, featuring some of the must radiant, gorgeous shotmaking I've ever been lucky enough to see.

I was pleased to find that Dolgopolov speaks English well. "It's quite tough, my style," he told me. "I need to really play the ball perfect. When I don't feel it really good, I lose easy matches. . ."

Well, we've heard that kind of thing before. But he went on. "I felt pretty good in the last tournament, I just had some health problems starting in Toronto. I couldn't pull out of the tournament, that made no sense, so I had to deal with it.

"I have this problem from birth—some blood problems. Sometimes, I don't feel so well, especially when I change time zones a lot: Australia, Europe to the U.S. . . That's why I don't like to fly. Sometimes it affects my game, and I just have to deal with it. I couldn't have the usual [medical] treatment before the U.S. Open Series because I played Umag and then had just five days before I came to the U.S."

"And what exactly is that treatment?"

"They do intravenous blood stuff. They just put some medicine in, and I have to take some pills and change my diet, take some time [two weeks] off."

I had to ask, what is this disease officially called?

"I don't really want to say a lot. . . I just have it. It affects my stomach. I feel ill all the time. I don't want to eat. So for four tournaments now, I couldn't play my game. "In Cincinnati, I felt a lot better. I was more consistent in my game. Here in New York, I didn't even practice before the tournament. I practiced today for 20 minutes, just to hit the ball. I'm feeling really bad.

"So today I risked what I could, got a few games, but pretty well that was the maximum of what I can do. I couldn't run. I couldnt serve. I was feeling dizzy. I just had to go for it because the more I played the worse I felt. So I just play like I could, and with David you have to play really soild, because he's running so good, and he's getting all the balls back. I couldn't let him play a lot."

I felt badly for the guy. I reminded him he still managed to pull an impressive number of rabbits out of his hat.

"Well, it's my style, too. I don't wait for the other guys. I don't run like crazy on the baseline. I like to play a lot of risk—attacking tennis, serving fast, going to net, drop shots. . .And now, with my health, I don't have a choice. I can't imagine running and working out points."

So there it is. And I thought I'd more or less heard it all. I need a drink, almost as badly as Dolgopolov must. But I, at least, can drink whatever the hail I want.