By Mark Winters
Tennis is filled with fascinating stories and this year’s Gerry Weber Open has been a “must read tale” on a daily basis. Today’s feature is about Denis Kudla and as the saying goes, “it is a page turner…”
Kudla was born in Kiev, Ukraine, but when the Soviet Union collapsed his parents, Vladimir and Lucy Kudla, along with his older brother, Nikita moved to the US. They settle in Fairfax, Virginia, and none of the family spoke English. Leaving a constrictive, restrictive political regime for a wealth of new opportunities and most important, freedom, cannot be measured on a “value meter”. The Kudlas move, though, was even more memorably treasured because Denis celebrated his first birthday on the day they arrived August 17, 1993.
On Monday, June 18th when the ATP 500 tournament began in Halle Westfalen, Kudla was the eleventh American listed in the ATP rankings. Lodged at No. 109, he had to play through the qualifying in order to gain a spot in the draw. He did it handily by defeating Guido Pella of Argentina and Nikoloz Basilashvili of Georgia, losing only seven and six games in the two contests.
His “I’m on…” rhythm continued in the main draw when he stopped fellow-qualifier Lukas Lacko of Slovakia 6-4, 6-4, in the first round, and followed up with a 6-3, 6-4 decision over Stefanos Tsitsipas, the 19-year-old promising Greek talent.
While riding today from the tournament hotel (the Arcadia) in Bielefeld to the Gerry Weber Stadion facility, the song “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” was playing on the radio while it drizzled, promising a rainbow somewhere. It was fitting because as we (my wife Cheryl Jones and long-time tournament staff member, Ingrid Dua) listened to a version of the song by Israel Kamakawiwo’ole that Judy Garland made famous in the movie it appeared in – The Wizard of Oz – the clouds parted, and the rain stopped. Promising good things as rainbows do.
In his quarterfinal today against Yuichi Sugita of Japan, Kudla wasn’t somewhere over the rainbow, he was beyond it. He opened the match breaking Sugita’s serve and holding his own. The 29-year-old Tokyo resident held his serve in the third game, but the 25-year-old American collected three games in a row. Sugita won his serve at love to make the score 5-2. Attempting to close things out, Kudla dropped the first two points on his serve, then collected four in a row to make it 6-2 in his favor.
As off as Sugita’s groundstrokes were in the initial set, they were “on” in the second and he raced to a 3-0 lead. Kudla seemed to have lost his magic at that juncture, and was piling up unforced errors galore, blasting his shots here and there…everywhere but within the court lines. Down 5-2, he took a medical time out to have his left groin and quadricep treated.
Forced to serve, with his upper left thigh wrapped, he found the rainbow again and held to make the score 5-3. Sugita, whose groundstrokes, particularly his forehand, had been making his opponent race around the expanse of the Gerry Weber Stadion court quite suddenly lost his pathfinder. He became distracted serving for the second set at 5-3, lost the game, along with the next three giving Kudla a 6-2, 7-5 victory.
Immediately after the match, Kudla was interviewed on court and told the spectators still in the stands, “I played ‘lights out’ in the first set but lost a bit of focus at the beginning of the second. He played really well. Then I got back on track…I am very pleased.”
With the victory, he should be more than pleased because he joins a very select group of US competitors. In twenty-six Gerry Weber Opens, only four other players from America have reached the last four. Jonathan Stark did it in 1993, the inaugural year. He lost 7-5, 7-6 to Andrei Medvedev of Ukraine, (who was defeated in the final by Henri Leconte of France, 6-2, 6-3).
Nicklas Kulti of Sweden downed Richey Reneberg in the 1996 semifinal, 7-6, 7-6 and went on to win the tournament, outlasting Yevgeny Kafelnikov of Russia, 6-7, 6-3, 6-4 in the final. Four years later, Michael Chang, after scoring a 7-5, 6-0 victory over a young Roger Federer, was overwhelmed by Richard Krajicek of the Netherlands, 6-2, 6-1 in the semifinal. Krajicek, in turn, was surprised by Munich’s David Prinosil, 6-3, 6-2 in the title round. James Blake, in the 2008 semifinals, came up short 6-3, 7-5 against Phillip Kohlschreiber of Germany, who lost to Federer, 6-3, 6-4 in the trophy round.
Mardy Fish set the Halle standard for American competitors. He reached the 2004 final where Federer captured the second of what would become four tournament trophies in a row winning, 6-0, 6-3. This was after Fish, in a tense semifinal against Rainer Schuttler, who was born in Korbach, survived 6-4, 4-6, 7-6.
In tomorrow’s semifinal, Kudla will face “Mr. Halle”, Roger Federer, who is looking to duplicate his last year’s tournament champion success and have a chance to collect his tenth Gerry Weber Open title. In 2015, again as a qualifier, Kudla reach the only other ATP World Tour semifinal of his career. That was in Atlanta where he lost to tournament winner John Isner.
While the task ahead is daunting, Denis Kudla should keep in mind Harold Arlen’s magical lyrics…
“…Somewhere over the Rainbow, bluebirds fly
And the dream that you dare to
Why, oh why can’t I?…”
