TENNIS ATP FINALS – In the first match of Group A Stan Wawrinka won easily against Tomas Berdych with a double 6-1 in less than an hour of play. The Czech player gave one of his worst performances making 20 unforced errors for just 4 winners. From London, Paul Sassoon
It was difficult to predict that Tomas Berdych would give such an embarrassing performance. He lost in less than an hour against Stan Wawrinka that didn’t need to do much to take the W in his first match at the 2014 ATP Finals. The O2 Arena wasn’t full this afternoon and not very involved in the match. There were pockets of Czech and Swiss fans scattered around the Arena. The match was never close so the crowd never got excited. Amongst the various “come on Stan” and “come on Tomas” one fan attempted to yodel which was greeted by laughter.
Wawrinka was as surprised as most of the fans with how easily he won, “I didn’t expect to win that easy in the score, for sure. But I was ready to play well. I did a great week of preparation. I did work really, really hard since few weeks with Magnus. Even if the result wasn’t there in Basel and Paris, I was feeling the ball really well at the practice court.” The Swiss number two took credit for the win by highlighting how he troubled the Czech from the start, “I think I did play a really good match. And since the beginning, I start really well on my serve. If you look, the second game, I had two time just a return and then I had one backhand and I put him directly under pressure. At that moment he saw that I was taking the ball really early, seeing the ball really well, I was always putting him under pressure. He couldn’t really do anything except taking risk, and I was returning everything. I’m just looking the match in general. If he play good or bad, doesn’t matter for me. I’m happy with my performance. I’m happy the way I was playing. Serving really well. Returning almost everything. It seems it’s not usual. And, yeah, feeling good on the court.”
The Czech struggled from the start winning just five points in the first five games. The Swiss wasn’t playing at an extraordinary level and just needed to be consistent to win the first set 6-1 in just 25 minutes.
The second set had a more interesting beginning with Berdych holding his opening serve to love which gave the drowsy crowd a moment to cheer, but it wasn’t going to last. The Czech lost his serve again in the third game of the second set and then got completely deflated. A few minutes later Wawrinka won the match 6-1, 6-1 in just 58 minutes of play. The stats show how badly the Czech played, 4 winners and 20 unforced errors winning just five points on the Swiss’ serve.
A dejected Berdych tried to explain his performance at the press conference, “unfortunately it was my worst match of the whole season, and I kept it for the start here in the World Tour Finals. So that’s not the best one at the start. But, yeah, there are days like that. Now it’s over of that. Really, I mean, it’s just matter of, you know, looking forward, trying to find a way for next few days. Just try to leave this somewhere very far and try to come up with some better tennis.” The Czech said that he was feeling well coming into the match and seemed at a loss as to why he didn’t perform, “I felt really good. It’s not the way of, you know, being tired, even physically or mentally. That’s definitely not an issue. We have enough time between the last tournament in Paris coming here. So really this is not the problem. This is just a bad day. That’s how it is.”
