Tomas Berdych.net
a.k.a. The Birdman
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Place: Toronto, Canada Date: July 21-27, 2008 Draw
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July 18, 2008 With main draw action for the Rogers Cup set to get underway in just
a couple of days, players from the ATP Tour have touched down in Toronto and
made their way to Rexall Centre for practice. Many of the sport's biggest stars have already been spotted around
the grounds making last minute preparations before main draw play begins on
Monday. The biggest names seen so far are reigning French Open and Wimbledon
champion Rafael Nadal of Spain and defending Rogers Cup champion Novak Djokovic
of Serbia. Djokovic arrived in Toronto on Thursday evening and spent his Friday
working on his game on centre court with both countryman Janko Tipsarevic and
Croatia's Mario Ancic. Meanwhile, 2005 Rogers Cup winner Nadal landed at Pearson
International Airport early on Friday and showed up at Rexall Centre in the
evening for his first practice of the week. Several other top players have also been on site in the past couple
of days. Russia's Marat Safin, the 2000 Rogers Cup champion who received a
wildcard into the main draw after his stunning semifinal run at Wimbledon, was
around on Thursday practicing with Spain's Tommy Robredo. In addition, players
like world No. 4 Nikolay Davydenko, No. 10 Stanislas Wawrinka (Switzerland),
Richard Gasquet (France), Tomas Berdych
(Czech Republic), Mikhail Youzhny (Russia), Marcos Baghdatis (Cyprus) and
Philipp Kohlschreiber (Germany) are currently in Toronto warming up for the
tournament. Qualifying action begins Saturday morning at 10:00 a.m. and the
official main draw will take place on the Stage of Champions at 2:00 p.m.
(cut: Thomaz
Bellucci - 68) 1. Roger
Federer 2. Rafael
Nadal 3. Novak
Djokovic 4. Nikolay
Davydenko 5. David
Ferrer 6. Andy
Roddick 7. James
Blake 8. Andy
Murray 9. Stanislas
Wawrinka 10. Richard
Gasquet 11. Radek
Stepanek 12. Tommy
Robredo 13. Fernando
Verdasco 14. Fernando
Gonzalez 15. Mikhail
Youzhny 16. Tomas
Berdych
(1)Roger Federer (SUI)
bye Gilles Simon (FRA) vs
(q) Ernests Gulbis (LAT) vs
Jose Acasuso (ARG) (14)Fernando Gonzalez
(CHI) vs Julien Benneteau (FRA) (12)Tommy Robredo (ESP)
vs (WC)Frederic Niemeyer (CAN) Marin Cilic (CRO) vs
(q) Janko Tipsarevic (SRB)
vs Nicolas Mahut (FRA) (6)Andy Roddick (USA)
bye (4)Nikolay Davydenko
(RUS) bye Carlos Moya (ESP) vs
Tommy Haas (GER) Mardy Fish (USA) vs
Nicolas Kiefer (GER) (15)Mikhail Youzhny
(RUS) vs Andreas Seppi (ITA) (11)Radek Stepanek (CZE)
vs Feliciano Lopez (ESP) Dmitry Tursunov (RUS) vs
Nicolas Lapentti (ECU) (q) vs
(q) (7)James Blake (USA)
bye (8)Andy Murray (GBR)
bye (q) vs
(q) Samuel Querrey (USA) vs
(WC)Marat Safin (RUS) (9)Stanislas Wawrinka
(SUI) vs Simone Bolelli (ITA) (13)Fernando Verdasco
(ESP) vs Thomaz Bellucci (BRA) Guillermo Canas (ARG) vs
Robin Soderling (SWE) Mario Ancic (CRO) vs
(WC)Frank Dancevic (CAN) (3)Novak Djokovic (SRB)
bye (5)David Ferrer (ESP)
bye Robby Ginepri (USA) vs
Paul-Henri Mathieu (FRA) Philipp Kohlschreiber
(GER) vs (q) (10)Richard Gasquet
(FRA) vs Michael Llodra (FRA) (16)Tomas Berdych (CZE) vs Jarkko Nieminen
(FIN) Gael Monfils (FRA) vs
Igor Andreev (RUS) Marcos Baghdatis (CYP)
vs (WC)Peter Polansky (CAN) (2)Rafael Nadal (ESP)
bye
Monday, 21 July 2008
Hi
everyone, It's good to be blogging
from Toronto. But I don't want to get anyone's hopes up... I'm no Dmitry
Tursunov :) I haven't had a chance to speak with him this week, but when I do he
may have some tips he's willing to pass
along!. I'm here with a good
group of Czech guys, including Radek Stepanek, Lukas Dlouhy and my coach
Jaroslav Navratil. We've been playing some darts here in the player lounge,
which was a good way to pass the time Sunday with all the rain. I don't want to
start my first post by bragging, but I have to say that it was my day yesterday
and I won all but one game. When we played as teams my coach wanted to play with
me all the time! But today I started poorly in the morning and wasn't in the
same shape as Sunday.
My coach has a few
friends from the Czech Republic who came to visit us and I hadn't seen them
since the last time I was here, so we talked about the news in Czech. I don't
follow politics so there wasn't any talk about that. We have the world
championships in orienteering and Czech won one gold and two silver. There was
also a lot of talk about hockey and of course Jaromir Jagr - whether it's a good
choice for him to go to Russia or stay in the
NHL. We also spent some time
Sunday watching the final round of the British Open. I was hoping 53-year-old
Greg Norman was going to win. To be in a position to win a major at that age is
a fantastic effort. I play Jarkko Nieminen in the first round tomorrow. He's a very nice guy and we've spent a lot of time on the tour together. Last year he also played in the Czech league and played for our team. Everyone was speaking Czech so I'm not sure how much he understood. He tried to speak a few words but Czech is one of the worst languages to learn, so it wasn't easy for him. Thanks for reading my first post. Talk to you tomorrow. Tomas
Order of Play - Tuesday, July 22, 2008
COURT 1
Tomas Berdych in action against Nieminen at the Rogers Cup in Toronto SEE PHOTO
No. 16 seed Tomas Berdych, playing in his first event since finishing runner-up to Tommy Robredo at Bastad, improved to 22-14 for the season with a comfortable 6-3, 6-1 victory over Jarkko Nieminen. The Czech 22-year-old, who was a semifinalist at the Sony Ericsson Open in Miami (l. to Nadal), fired 12 aces and converted four of six break points to wrap up victory in 51 minutes.
Tuesday, 22 July 2008 Well, here I am in the training room with
ATP Sports Medicine Trainer Christian Swier. The trainers are good guys and very
understanding. During a massage players will often be talking with the trainers
and the next thing you know they've drifted off to sleep. I hope Christian
didn't take it personally today when I caught a little nap during the massage
after my win over Jarkko Nieminen. During a massage if I have a problem I'll
talk to him about that, but if it's just a routine massage we'll talk about
anything and swap stories. But at some point I like to close the eyes and relax
and take a little sleep. Today James Blake was getting a massage next to me and
was sleeping pretty hard... but at least he wasn't snoring
:) You can also see that I was checking my text
messages on my phone. I'd just finished the match so I had some messages coming
in from my girlfriend Lucy and my family. With the time difference back home
they were close to going to sleep so I wanted to send a reply before too long.
Lucy just said she was happy for the result and let me know that she had been at
a barbecue today. The number of messages that comes in after a
match depends a lot on whether the match is on TV. Today we were on a small
court and you could only follow the match on live scores, so I really only had
four or five messages waiting for me. But if it's a Davis Cup match at home and
I have won, the number can be really high. Once I got over 100 messages after a
match. Today my father watched the live scores of
my match. He tries not to miss a point. If my match is on TV he will watch it
even if it is late in the night. I think he even wakes up even if all he can do
is watch the live scores tick over. I got really lucky with the weather today. I
practised as scheduled and then right at the end it started to rain. My match
was second following Cilic and Dlouhy, who had to stop two or three times due to
the rain. But I got through my match without any stoppages. There was some very
light rain a couple of times but nothing hard enough to stop the match.
I didn't manage to find Dmitry today but
I'll make it my mission to get some blogging tips from
him. Look out for my next post tomorrow. Tomas
Order of Play - Wednesday, July 23, 2008 COURT 1
Result: Igor Andreev
(Russia) beat 16-Tomas Berdych
(Czech Republic)
Apart from Federer, there were a number of other seeds who were upset in this extended evening session. No. 12 Tommy Robredo lost to Croatian Marin Cilic, the youngest remaining player in the draw, No. 13 Fernando Verdasco was defeated by Swedish sensation Robin Soderling, No. 14 Fernando Gonzalez went three sets against Jose Acasuso and came up short and No. 16 Tomas Berdych was beat by Igor Andreev's powerful forehand.
Wednesday, 23 July 2008 Hi everyone, It was obviously disappointing to lose today. It's always a bit challenging when you have delays because of rain and the schedule gets changed a few times. I felt ready for the match, but Igor played very well. I'm pretty tired from the day, so I'm going to keep this entry short. But I'm going to still be in Toronto tomorrow, and will write more then. Here is a photo of me playing pool during the rain delay. Tomas
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