The G-Boys

There's a poll on the ATP website at the moment that is trying to ascertain who is the biggest improver of 2010. Mardy Fish, John Isner and Jurgen Melzer are all on there, as is Aleksandr Dolgopolov Jr, who obviously has improved, even though I don't remember it happening.

But most importantly, two of my favourite young characters are on there. Both have won their first titles this year, and I have hopes of great things for both of them.

Andrey Golubev. Ernests Gulbis. Improved. Still improving.

Finally.

I've talked a lot about my fangirlishness of Golubev lately, so I'll leave him alone for now, but let's talk Gulbis. I have been on his bandwagon for what feels like a thousand years now, waiting for him to break through. Sometimes I thought I was the only one on the bandwagon, though at other times it was quite popular. Though, with injury and whatnot, he hasn't been around much lately, it is really good to know that I was right. Gulbis is going places.

Both Gulbis and Golubev have massive tennis stories left to tell. Both are relatively late bloomers, but so what? So are plenty of players. I don't know if either of them will ever win a Slam - though Gulbis might surprise you! - but there is a lot of success ahead of both of them. I am sure of this.

And I'd also like to point out that Gulbis is leading the poll at the moment, and Golubev is coming second. But the real winner? Me, obviously.

(This is a joke, clearly.)

Blood From a Stone

...and then there's the other big story out of the weekend, which is that Great Britain was defeated by Lithuania in the playoffs way down the scale. This pretty much ensures that ol' GB will fall even farther down in those subsidiary groups.

This, at the outset, seems quite unusual, on account of Britain having a top ten player. But I think this goes to show that one man does not a team make. If Andy Murray does not play, well, Britain are rightly where they are. They have a few subsidiary players, but no one marvellous. They belong with the Lithuanias of the world. That is where they are at, talent-wise, at the moment.

Which is why I find it so perverse that people are out for blood.

I mean, sure it sucks for British tennis that Britain is losing. But that is just the way it goes. There is just not the talent in Britain at the moment to be a gun Davis Cup nation. If you want to look at something, look at the way you're grooming your juniors. Look at your talent scouting processes. But firing the coach or a whole bunch of people is not magically going to make the team you have play better. There is no quick fix.

There is no short term solution to a lack of immediate talent. The only thing you can do is look at how you are finding and developing talent. We see the same thing in Australia - this is why there is so much pressure on the shoulders of Bernard Tomic. We want there to be someone awesome, and we want them now.

But the reality is that sometimes your stable is full of awesome players, and sometimes all the talent was born into another country. And you can fire as many people as you want - it's not going to fix anything. You cannot get blood from a stone.

Mighty Marin Strikes Again

Marin Cilic, you are mighty.

I didn't see the match, so I don't know if Rafa was injured or if Shmafa turned up or what happened, but for someone to beat him so comprehensively, they have to be playing pretty damn well. Mighty Marin Cilic, that was some win.

I've been on the Mighty Marin bandwagon for a long time now, and so it makes me very happy to see him doing well and knocking out quality opponents - though I still love you, Rafa, fear not. As we saw in the US Open, when he totally smashed Andy Murray like a guitar, he is capable of tennis that truly rocks the kasbah. He's got talent in huge lashings and when it's on display, he is absolutely fearsome. Top ten for sure.

However, the one problem Marin has is that this talent doesn't always come to play. He gets nervous - I note that this happened in the third set last night, where he was on the path to beating Rafa breadstick and breadstick but suffered from some tightness. This is, I think, the last major hurdle he has to overcome. If he can bring his talent, or at least some measure of it, to play on every occasion he steps on the court, he is going to skyrocket up the rankings. Nalbandian-esque streakiness won't do him any favours in the long run.

So it will be interesting to see what he delivers when he steps on court against Novak Djokovic tomorrow. I'm going to go out on a limb and pick Cilic to win - but if, and only if, he shows up with talent in tow.


Today's Results

China Open (Bejing)

Men's Draw

Marin Cilic def. Rafael Nadal, 6-1 6-3
Novak Djokovic def. Robin Soderling, 6-3 6-3


Women's Draw

Svetlana Kuznetsova def. Nadia Petrova, 6-1 6-3
Agnieszka Radwanska def. Marion Bartoli, 6-4 6-3


Rakuten Japan Open Tennis Championships (Tokyo)

Jo-Wilfried Tsonga def. Gael Monfils, 6-3 6-3
Mikhail Youzhny def. Lleyton Hewitt, 6-2 5-7 7-5

Reconciliation, Double Time

Now, forgive me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi hated each others' guts. But now they're suddenly playing doubles together in Indy. What's with that?

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Maybe India made them reconcile so they can play doubles at the Olympics. But that's naive - you can't just MAKE people reconcile... unless they haven't, and they're just doing this because they've been made to. I would love to know what's gone on behind the scenes there. Are there secret police in the mens' locker room, forcing them to shake hands and talk tennis strategy? Not that I'm suggesting India has secret police. Not that I'm suggesting they don't have them, either.

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Thing is, India has another really good doubles player in Rohan Bopanna. I've never seen him play men's doubles, but I saw him play mixed with Sania Mirza at the Hopman Cup this year, and they were pretty extraordinary. I don't know whether that was just with Sania or whether he's just a good doubles player, but I'm going with the latter. So if the Indian Sporting Federation (or whatever they're called) wants a doubles team for the Olympics, they could partner either Paes or Bhupathi with Bopanna - whichever they preferred. But I suppose that Bopanna probably has a better singles career at the moment than either Bhupathi or Paes, so I guess it wouldn't be fair to cut out either one...

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In which case, the Bhupathi/Paes reconciliation might actually be genuine. Maybe they're both trying to ensure that they get to play in the Olympics - which is a pretty decent motivation. (Cough Roddick cough Gasquet cough.) But surely, if they hated each other as much as I was under the impression that they did, they would be trying to backstab each other and stuff to ensure they got the one spot on offer. Who knows?

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You've got to feel sorry for Rohan Bopanna. No matter what's going on, it's got to be hard for him.

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You never really think of India as a powerhouse of tennis, but they have a few good players coming through now. In the women's game, you obviously have Sania Mirza, but Sunitha Rao is coming up, and she's not half bad. In the men, there are Bhupathi, Paes and Bopanna, and now Prakash Amritraj, who made the Newport final. So on the whole, they're not doing too bad.

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Although, when you consider that approximately one seventh of the earth's population comes from India, you would expect a much higher proportion of good players. I don't think there's any racial disposition that lends itself especially to tennis. So why are there so few Indian tennis players - and Chinese players? I mean, there are a few, but not as many as you would expect.

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The answer, I suppose, is to do with poverty and the lack of opportunity for people in these countries. And it makes you wonder - how much talent is there in the world that goes unrealised, how much potential untapped? Maybe somewhere in the slums of Varanasi or the suburbs of Shanghai, there is someone with talent that could rival Federer - but we will never know, because they have not had the opportunities. Imagine if Roger Federer had somehow never been introduced to the game of tennis. All that talent, all that potential gone to waste. What a tragedy that would have been - except no one would ever, ever know. Not even Roger.

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Kind of makes you question your own life, hey. What box are we not thinking outside of? Maybe you or I or anyone has an amazing talent that we just don't know about. Maybe I could have been, oh, I don't know, the world's best bridge player or aerial skiier, but I'll never know, because I've never tried either. The lesson is, I suppose, to try everything, because you never know what you might be good at.

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Wow. That was deep.

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Today's Results

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Austrian Open (Kitzbuhel)

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Potito Starace def. Daniel Koellerer, 6-4 6-3

Eduardo Schwank def. Daniel Brands, 6-1 6-4

Victor Hanescu def. Guillermo Garcia-Lopez, 6-2 6-1

Brian Dabul def. Ivo Minar, 6-4 6-3

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Dutch Open Tennis (Amersfoort)

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Marc Gicquel def. Thiemo de Bakker, 7-6 (8-6) 6-3

Steve Darcis def. Alberto Martin, 6-1 7-6 (7-5)

Teimuraz Gabashvili def. Martin Vassallo Arguello, 6-4 6-0

Christophe Rochus def. Philipp Petzschner, 6-3 6-4

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Studena Croatia Open (Umag)

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Fernando Verdasco def. Mathieu Montcourt, 7-6 (7-5) 6-1

Carlos Moya def. Viktor Troicki, 3-6 7-6 (7-2) 7-5

Fabio Fognini def. Filippo Volandri, 6-4 6-4

Mischa Zverev def. Marcos Daniel, 6-4 6-2

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Indianapolis Tennis Championships (Indianapolis)

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Sam Querrey def. Go Soeda, 6-4 6-4

James Blake def. Dudi Sela, 7-6 (7-2) 6-2

Vince Spadea def. Donald Young, 6-2 6-4

Gilles Simon def. Benjamin Becker, 7-5 3-6 6-0

Dmitry Tursunov def. Wayne Odesnik, walkover

Tommy Haas def. John Isner, 6-3 6-4

Paul Capdeville def. Joseph Sirianni, 6-3 6-4

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Bank of the West Classic (Stanford)

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Anna Chakvetadze def. Shahar Peer, 6-3 6-4

Ai Sugiyama def. Daniela Hantuchova, 6-3 6-1

Dominika Cibulkova def. Kateryna Bondarenko, 6-2 6-3

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Gastein Ladies (Bad Gastein)

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Agnes Szavay def. Viktoriya Kutuzova, 6-4 6-2

Rossana de los Ríos def. Alizé Cornet, 2-6 6-2 3-2 retired

Caroline Wozniacki def. Hsieh Su-Wei, 6-1 6-1

Timea Bacsinszky def. Liana Ungur, 6-3 3-6 6-3

Karolina Sprem def. Vera Dushevina, 6-3 6-4

Mariya Koryttseva def. Tzipora Obziler, 6-2 6-1

Yvonne Meusburger def. Stéphanie Cohen-Aloro, 7-5 6-2

Lucie Hradecka def. Zhang Shuai, 6-3 6-0

Tereza Hladikova def. Nuria Llagostera Vives, 3-6 7-6 (8-6) 7-5

Anna-Lena Groenefeld def. Julia Vakulenko, 6-1 6-1

Patricia Mayr def. Martina Müller, 6-3 6-3

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And today in Stars of the Past, Stars of the Future: Eduardo Schwank.

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Eduardo Schwank won three Challengers on clay in a row coming into Roland Garros, where he defeated Carlos Moya and was the last Argentinean left standing. However, he is perhaps best known for accidentally starting a fire in a hotel in Paris, which saw other players (including the Ratiawana twins and Rik de Voest) fleeing for their lives, and sent Schwank's winnings from the Rome Challenger up in smoke. It was his own fault, one might argue, but one can't help feeling a bit sorry for him. For a player on the satellite circuit, those winnings can be lifeblood.

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But Schwank appears to have left the satellite circuits behind him. His third round finish at the French Open gave him automatic entry into Wimbledon, and although he lost in the first round, it looks like Eduardo Schwank is here to stay. He is seeded this week at the ATP tournament in Kitzbuhel - a far cry from the Challengers. He is back on clay, his favourite surface. He was the Challenger circuit's Rafael Nadal this season, and it will be interesting to see how he will perform on clay next year, when he won't be playing those satellites, one assumes. No, Schwank is playing with the big boys now - and one gets the feeling that he likes it.

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The real test for Schwank will be the upcoming US hard court season. He is virtually untested on hard courts in the main ATP draw, and his performance here could determine whether or not he falls back to playing those Challengers, or whether he continues his rise towards the upper echelons of tennis. Perhaps it will be a test of Eduardo's character rather than his game - getting to the ATP level is one thing. Staying there is quite another.