Yeah, I think after the first match we'll have a pretty good idea. The only exception is Soderling's elbow - Magnus Norman has said it's fine atm, but potentially it could flare up. If he has a long hard match, perhaps some danger he struggles in his next one.
The court is also very unusual - low bounce, and very slow. There are only two other hard courts like that on the tour: Kuala Lumpur (Davydenko won it), and Valencia (Murray won it). First thoughts are...
* Soderling and del Potro will be vulnerable to low slices, especially from the better slicers (Federer and Murray)
* Nadal won't like it offensively cos his topspin won't kick up at all, but defensively he should be very difficult to hit through, except vs huge flat hits to his forehand (Soderling and Del Potro), and maybe Davydenko's ultra-early hitting (not sure of Davy's form though).
* Djoko should be fine. Although he says he likes quick courts, his best results traditionally come on medium or even medium/slow courts like the Aus Open, Indian Wells, and various clay courts. He has a distinct weakness vs strong first serves on fast courts (which is why Stepanek and Wawrinka could and should have beaten him in Basel), but here servers have almost no advantage at all.
* Davy? No idea where his formline is going. He did win Kuala Lumur, but really struggled in Valencia, throwing in tons of errors against Youzhny. I think the problem was Youzhy's flat groundstrokes and slices gave him nothing to attack, and Davydenko's best results have come on slow, higher bouncing courts (clay, and Miami masters last year, Shanghai masters this year). If that analysis is correct, he's going to have a horrible time against Soderling, and Murray too if he meets him. Djoko and particularly Nadal hit with much more topspin so mebbe not such an issue.
Anyway, good matches today. DelPot was good for a bit, but Murray is a hard opponent for him (1-5 h2h, and now 0-4 on hard). Murray still mentally not all there though, he has these long periods in the middle of matches where he forgets how to play completely.
Fed-Verdasco is a shocker though. Verdasco I thought would be in his walking-corpse mode of the last month or so, but he's outstanding. Fed...... isn't. Really, really bad.
The court is also very unusual - low bounce, and very slow. There are only two other hard courts like that on the tour: Kuala Lumpur (Davydenko won it), and Valencia (Murray won it). First thoughts are...
* Soderling and del Potro will be vulnerable to low slices, especially from the better slicers (Federer and Murray)
* Nadal won't like it offensively cos his topspin won't kick up at all, but defensively he should be very difficult to hit through, except vs huge flat hits to his forehand (Soderling and Del Potro), and maybe Davydenko's ultra-early hitting (not sure of Davy's form though).
* Djoko should be fine. Although he says he likes quick courts, his best results traditionally come on medium or even medium/slow courts like the Aus Open, Indian Wells, and various clay courts. He has a distinct weakness vs strong first serves on fast courts (which is why Stepanek and Wawrinka could and should have beaten him in Basel), but here servers have almost no advantage at all.
* Davy? No idea where his formline is going. He did win Kuala Lumur, but really struggled in Valencia, throwing in tons of errors against Youzhny. I think the problem was Youzhy's flat groundstrokes and slices gave him nothing to attack, and Davydenko's best results have come on slow, higher bouncing courts (clay, and Miami masters last year, Shanghai masters this year). If that analysis is correct, he's going to have a horrible time against Soderling, and Murray too if he meets him. Djoko and particularly Nadal hit with much more topspin so mebbe not such an issue.
Anyway, good matches today. DelPot was good for a bit, but Murray is a hard opponent for him (1-5 h2h, and now 0-4 on hard). Murray still mentally not all there though, he has these long periods in the middle of matches where he forgets how to play completely.
Fed-Verdasco is a shocker though. Verdasco I thought would be in his walking-corpse mode of the last month or so, but he's outstanding. Fed...... isn't. Really, really bad.