Potato

Some players just fly under the radar. You know their names, you know they float around in the top hundred, and usually you know where they come from, but you wouldn't know them if you fell over them in the street and you couldn't name their significant career wins if someone paid you. On the whole, they have never been very deep at Slams - maybe an occasional round of sixteen, but rarely more than that. They do well in the IS and ISG tournaments, but are not particularly remarkable.

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One day, I am going to find out what makes these unremarkable players remarkable. Because they must be remarkable. You don't get to be in the top one hundred in the world without being a little bit remarkable. Let's name names. Potito Starace. Fabio Fognini. Jurgen Melzer. These guys have all been round for a while, but I could tell you next to nothing about them, except that Starace and Fognini are Italian and Melzer is Austrian. Oh, and Starace's name sounds like 'potato.' But that hardly takes rocket science to work out.

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Let's take Starace. He is 27. I know that. He comes from Cervinara. He plays right handed. And that's it. That is the extent of my knowledge.

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But there are other players, ranked in the same sort of area, that I know loads more about. Take Tommy Haas. Actually, he might be a bad example, because he's been up there in the top ten. According to the ATP website, Starace has never been higher than #27. Let's look at Robin Soderling, then. He's ranked #48, with a career high of #23. He plays right handed and lives in Monte Carlo.

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But I can also tell you that Soderling hates Nadal, and that it's apparently reciprocated. Soderling is considered a danger man on tour. He's quite good on grass. He's Swedish, and sometimes plays doubles with Jonas Bjorkman. Not many facts, sure, but some.

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Why do I know about Soderling? Because he's played a big match at a Slam. And I'm not just talking about a match against a big player, because Starace has played his share of those. I remember coming up against Rafa a couple of times, and losing pretty dismally. Soderling, however, was one half of that marathon five day match at Wimbledon last year, where his dislike of Rafa was fomented. And those are the things that make you remember people.

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So what can Potito do, if he wants people to remember him? He already has the advantage of a memorable, vegetablesque name. Actually, I wonder how famous he is in Italy? Is he a Hewitt or a Guccione? Or a Sirianni? There are quite a few good tennis players from Italy - there's equally forgettable Fognini and Bolelli and Seppi and Volandri. (I just went on the ATP website to see if there were any famous Italians I'd missed, and I was stunned to discover that Filippo Volandri is now ranked #138 in the world. When did that happen? He was about #30 last time I checked. What happened?) I wonder what kind of profile tennis has in Italy. How famous are these boys? And it's not like they're totally deficient in the women's draws, either - Flavia Pennetta springs inexorably to mind.

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But I'm talking about Potito's international recognition, not homegrown Italian fame. And not even household name status - just within the tennis community. (Look at me talking like I am one of the tennis community... Potito's probably done loads of wacky things that people talk about.) If you look at the press conference archive on ASAP sports, there is not one single conference from Starace. Not one.

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So if Starace wants to be famous, he has to either:

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- do well at a Slam.

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- do something stupid to get himself in the tennis news.

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- play a really, really long match at a Slam sometime.

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I don't know. Hell, why am I even writing about this? I know nothing about Starace - including whether or not he wants to be famous. Maybe he's content flying under the radar. But we'll never find out unless he does something remarkable.

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Today's Results

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Austrian Open (Kitzbuhel)

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Jurgen Melzer def. Rainer Schuettler, 2-6 7-5 7-5

Potito Starace def. Eduardo Schwank, 6-1 6-2

Juan Martin Del Potro def. Nicolas Devilder, 6-2 6-3

Victor Hanescu def. Brian Dabul, 6-3 6-4

Rainer Schuettler def. Jan Hernych, 2-6 6-4 7-5

Juan Martin Del Potro def. Sergio Roitman, 6-2 6-4

Nicolas Devilder def. Alexander Peya, 6-4 6-4

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Dutch Open Tennis (Amersfoort)

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Marc Gicquel def. Teimuraz Gabashvili, 6-4 6-1

Steve Darcis def. Christophe Rochus, 7-5 6-3

Albert Montanes def. Jose Acasuso, 6-0 6-2

Oscar Hernandez def. Marcel Granollers, 7-5 6-2

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Studena Croatia Open (Umag)

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Fernando Verdasco def. Mischa Zverev, 7-5 7-5

Fabio Fognini def. Carlos Moya, 6-4 6-3

Igor Andreev def. Guillermo Canas, 7-5 6-4

Maximo Gonzalez def. Roko Karanusic, 2-6 6-3 7-6 (7-4)

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Indianapolis Tennis Championships (Indianapolis)

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James Blake def. Woong-Sun Jun, 6-3 7-5

Sam Querrey def. Vince Spadea, 4-6 6-3 6-4

Gilles Simon def. Tommy Haas, 4-6 6-4 6-2

Sam Querrey def. Bobby Reynolds, 6-1 3-6 6-3

James Blake def. Yen-Hsun Lu, 6-2 6-0

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Bank of the West Classic (Stanford)

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Samantha Stosur def. Vera Zvonareva, 6-3 6-2

Patty Schnyder def. Alisa Kleybanova, 7-6 (10-8) 6-4

Marion Bartoli def. Anne Keothavong, 6-3 1-6 7-5

Aleksandra Wozniak def. Sybille Bammer, 6-4 7-5

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Gastein Ladies (Bad Gastein)

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Agnes Szavay def. Melanie Klaffner, 3-6 7-6 (10-8) 7-6 (7-3)

Mariya Koryttseva def. Caroline Wozniacki, 6-4 4-6 7-6 (7-5)

Pauline Parmentier def. Anna-Lena Groenefeld, 7-5 4-6 6-4

Lucie Hradecka def. Timea Bacsinszky, 6-1 6-4

Iveta Benesova def. Galina Voskoboeva, 6-4 4-6 6-1

Yvonne Meusburger def. Maret Ani 6-2 2-6 6-3

Tereza Hladikova def. Karolina Sprem, 6-3 1-6 6-4

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And in the last installment of Stars of the Past, Stars of the Future (for now!): Ernests Gulbis.

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Ernests Gulbis is the potential #1 that the world never saw coming. Like Jeremy Chardy, he exploded on the scene at Roland Garros 2008, but he's been making inroads for a lot longer than that. He attended the same tennis academy as world number #3 Novak Djokovic, the academy run by Niki Pilic. Djokovic graduated and went on to great things, as we have all seen - but it was for Ernests Gulbis that Pilic actually left the academy for a time so he could focus on one-on-one training. This teenager from Latvia has got a very special talent - perhaps one seen only once in a generation. Roger Federer turned out to be the king of his generation, the New Balls generation. Could Gulbis be the king of his?

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It seems a little pre-emptive to make this claim - and one feels that there is a man by the name of Rafael Nadal that might have something to say about that. But Ernests Gulbis has clearly got something going on. And it does seem unfair to put him in the same generation as Nadal or even his old friend Djokovic. Age is not necessarily the correct demarcation of generation. Gulbis belongs to the generation of Chardy, Cilic and Schwank - and of the four, it seems likely that he will turn out to be the best.

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Gulbis was the only man apart from Roger Federer to take a set from Nadal at Wimbledon this year. Despite the massively powerful groundstrokes of Nadal, Gulbis proved himself capable of dominating at the baseline. He is tall and thin and there seems to be little of him, but he is deceptively strong. He does not play the tennis of Fabrice Santoro, but he clearly has a very high tennis IQ. It seems only a matter of time before Gulbis breaks through with a big tournament win - and after that, who knows? The sky may well be the limit for Ernests Gulbis.