All Guns... Whimpering?

One of my favourite matches in Wimbledon this year was the third round clash between Rafa Nadal and Philipp Petzschner. (Brief tangent - Petzschner has since also become one of my favourite tweeters, if anyone is interested.) That match was a real clash. Rafa wasn't totally there - it wasn't quite Shmafa playing that match, but it wasn't RafaRafa either - and Petzschner played some of the most wonderful all guns blazing tennis I have seen in a while to grab two sets from the raging bull.

And now here we are, a couple of weeks later. Little tournament in Stuttgart. And Petzschner's going out first round.

C'mon, Petzschny! What are you trying to do to me here?

To be fair, he was playing Albert Montanes, who is seeded and thus ranked higher than him. But Montanes's real pedigree is, let's face it, on clay, and this tournament is in Petzschner's home country! And he was coming off such a good match in Wimbledon too, even if he lost... sigh.

Petzschner is the second player (apart from the usual crowd) who has really stood out to me this year, announced themselves in the tennis stadium in my mind. The first was Andrey Golubev (who actually had a win in Bastad - nice one!) after his absolute demolition of Igor Andreev at the Hopman Cup. Petzschner played that same sort of fearless tennis against Nadal, at least for a couple of sets... I mean, sure he didn't win the match, but he played some fierce stuff.

Let this not be one of those 'not with a bang but a whimper' situations. Because that would be epically disappointing. I want to see more of you, Philipp Petzschner. Don't make my Twitter-fangirling of you be for nothing!