Talented Tsonga thrills the fans
Monday, 14 January, 2008
By Bren O'Brien
http://www.australianopen.com/images/pics/large/b_jtsonga_0114_01.jpg
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In 2006 it was Marcos Baghdatis who thrilled us all the way to the men's
final, last year it was Fernando Gonzalez. Could Jo-Wilfried Tsonga be
the man to set alight Australian Open 2008?
While it may be a bit early to say the athletic Frenchman is going to charge
through the rounds, thrilling the fans and mystifying opponents, Tsonga has
the type of brilliant game which helped Baghdatis and Gonzalez through the
whole seven rounds over the past two years.
Against Andy Murray, the 22-year-old was his typical enigmatic self, playing
some breathtaking shots, and following them up with some daring tennis which
was probably better left in the kit bag. But in the end his brilliance won
out and the No.9 seed was sent on an early flight home.
Murray admitted afterwards that the world No38 was hard to cope with because
he was so streaky.
"He's been like that since the juniors. The most important thing is to get
his serve back," Murray said.
"He's obviously got a very good serve. You know, I didn't make enough returns
at the start of the match to then, you know, have a chance of really breaking
him. But obviously when you're serving, it's difficult because he'll run
around and try and smack some forehands.
"Some of them will miss by a few metres and some of them will be clean
winners. There's not much you can do about it."
The man himself wasn't so eloquent in describing his performance, but was
pretty much straight to the point.
"I played well. I don't know, I'm just happy to win today because it was
very difficult," he said. "I served well. I go to the net. It worked,
so..."
"I'm just happy it was on the Rod Laver. It was just nice. I don't know
what to say about that. Unbelievable."
Tsonga worked on a simple game plan of serving powerfully and getting to
the net as often as possible. It worked early in the match as he dominated
Murray, but he seemed to lose his way in the third set failing to take a
game off the Brit, who looked like turning the match around.
But Tsonga got back to the fundamentals late in the match, and after
getting into the tie-breaker, relied on his strong serve to set up
his win.
But he knows that if he is going to continue to climb the world rankings
and move on in the Australian Open, he needs to show his full array of
skills.
"Yeah, I try to. I try to. I think it's the way to go for me, you know,
play on the baseline, go to the net. I just try to be - I don't know how
say that - like complete, no?"
The opponents may find his style of play frustrating, but the crowd loves
it. And like Baghdatis and Gonzalez showed before him, crowd support can
help carry you a long way at Melbourne Park.
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