TENNIS in DEPTH.

Colombian qualifier Santiago Giraldo unleashed an arsenal of winners to upset former champion Juan Carlos Ferrero 6-0, 6-3 in the opening round at the Rome Masters.

The 76th-ranked Giraldo hit 32 winners to Ferrero’s nine on Monday, and required only 17 minutes to win the opening set.

Ferrero won this tournament in 2001 and entered with an 18-3 record on clay this season. But Giraldo came in on a run of his own, having beaten tour veterans Nicolas Lapentti and Jarkko Nieminen in qualifying.

Ernests Gulbis of Latvia cruised past Marcos Baghdatis of Cyprus 6-2, 6-2 and will face top-ranked Roger Federer.

In other matches, Italian wild card Paolo Lorenzi rallied to beat Albert Montanes 2-6, 6-4, 6-3, and Philipp Kohlschreiber of Germany eliminated Pablo Cuevas of Uruguay 6-7 (1), 6-1, 6-4.

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In a repeat of last year’s Final, Team USA will face Italy, the defending champions, but this time around the American squad will play host for the end of year finale in November.

The Italian team, barring injuries, will be the same one that won in 2009, and the same one that has reached the 2010 final. It would be great to think that the USA team would also consisit of those players who played their hearts out to reach the 2010 final. What a wonderful sportsman-like gesture it would be for Serena and Venus to contact the USTA and advise them that they are not available to play in Novemebr, and that Mary Joe Fernandez should go with the team that reached the final. But then I’m naive enough to believe in miracles!

How can the selection comittee ignore the efforts of Mattek-Sands, Oudin or Huber, and leave any one of  them off the team in November?

It had always been Liezel Huber’s dream scenario to play a live doubles rubber during Fed Cup action.

The No. 1 doubles player in the world was granted her wish at the Fed Cup semifinal against Russia on Sunday, teaming with Bethanie Mattek-Sands to bring home the 3-2 victory and a second straight Fed Cup Final berth.

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Andy Murray will need a clear head and an even clearer game plan when he plays Andreas Seppi, of Italy, in front of a raucous Foro Italico crowd in his opening match of the Rome Masters tomorrow.

If Murray remains mystified as to why he has played so disjointedly and with such lack of relish in his past two tournaments, he knows only one person can put it right. The defeats by Mardy Fish in Miami and Philipp Kohlschreiber in Monte Carlo gave the amateur psychiatrists a field day and penetrated the 22-year-old’s skin.

“As soon as I had one bad tournament in Miami, it was like everyone was asking, ‘Are you OK? What’s going wrong?’ Then you start thinking, ‘What is it? Is it my tennis? Is it something going on off the court? Is it family-related?’ I don’t think there’s a problem. It’s based on a couple of matches when mentally I didn’t turn up and I think I’m allowed to do that, given as many matches as I’ve played.

“Last year I played a lot of bad matches and came through them by fighting and thinking right. I’ve seen better players struggle worse than I am at the moment. It depends on what you let it do to you. For me, it’s made me want to practise harder and go to the gym more, which has been good for my mind and my tennis. Whatever anyone else says or writes doesn’t bother me.”

Courtesy  The Times.

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Reigning champions Italy eased into the Fed Cup final with a 5-0 whitewash of the Czech Republic in Rome.

Having led 2-0 overnight, Italy took an unassailable lead when Flavia Pennetta beat Petra Kvitova 7-6 (7-3) 6-2.

Sara Errani defeated Lucie Hradecka 6-4 6-2 before Errani and Francesca Schiavone beat Lucie Hradecka and Kveta Peschke 6-2, 6-4 to complete the rout.

Russia lead the United States 2-1 in the other semi after Elena Dementieva beat Melanie Oudin 7-6 (7-4) 0-6 6-3.

Neither player held serve for the first 10 games of the match before an error-strewn first set went into a tiebreak which Dementieva clinched after winning the last four points.

Oudin, 18, then raised her level, breaking the erratic Russian in the first, third and fifth games of the second set to level the match.

Although Dementieva was again broken in the third game of the final set to trail 1-2, she won the next four games before sealing victory when Oudin hit a forehand long.

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Fernando Verdasco claimed his second title this year with victory over Robin Soderling in the final of the Barcelona Open Banc Sabadell this afternoon.

The fifth seed from Madrid saw off the second-seeded Swede 6-3 4-6 6-3 to ensure there would be a Spanish winner at this event for the eighth straight year.

Verdasco headed into this tournament on the back of a thumping defeat to Rafael Nadal in the final of the Monte Carlo Masters last Sunday.

The 26-year-old won only one game against his fellow Spaniard Nadal, victor in the Catalan capital in each of the last five years, but responded well this week as he looked to add to the title he picked up in San Jose in February.

Verdasco broke his Swedish opponent in consecutive service games en route to the first set this afternoon but the 2009 French Open finalist hit back to take the second set.

The Spaniard broke Soderling again in the fourth game of the decider, however, and served out to clinch the title.

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Roger Federer has entered the doubles tournament at the Rome Masters with Swiss Davis Cup teammate Yves Allegro.

Federer is playing his first tournament on clay since winning his first French Open title last year.

Federer and Allegro were given a wild card, and will open against Johan Brunstrom of Sweden and Jean-Julien Rojer of the Netherlands Antilles.

Federer and Allegro hold a 3-2 record in Davis Cup doubles.

With Rafael Nadal down to No.3 in the world after his injuries and lean spell, there was always going to be a 50% chance that he would be drawn in the same half as Roger Federer for this year’s Internazionali BNL d’Italia, and this is exactly what has happened.

Defending champion Nadal, who finally got back to winning ways at Monte Carlo last week after a barren spell without a title to his name since Rome last year, is scheduled to face world No.1 Federer in the semi-finals (providing of course that all matches go according to seeding). Last year’s finalist and 2008 champion Novak Djokovic is No.2 seed this year and finds himself in what looks on paper like the slightly easier half of the draw, though with plenty of players having withdrawn through injury, others (Djokovic included) struggling for form and the European clay season barely more than a week old, anything could happen here at the Foro Italico over the coming eight days.

The top eight of the 16 seeds have a bye in the first round but there are already a number of big matches in store for the second round. Nadal will face the winner of Pablo Cuevas and dangerous German Philipp Kohlschreiber, ranked No.28 in the world and a tough nut for anyone to crack so early in the tournament. Federer meanwhile will have to take on whoever emerges victorious from the Marcos Baghdatis – Ernests Gulbis match which is one of the main ties of the first round.

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The draw for the Porshe Tennis Grand Prix was made yesterday in Stuttgart, and includes Dinara Safina as the second seed behind Caroline Wozniacki, both of whom received byes in the first round.

Ana Ivanovic who kicks of her clay court season in what she hopes will be a return to form has a tough first round match with Agnieszka Radwanska. Two other tough first round competitions will be Flavia Pennetta versus Victoria Azarenka, and Francesca Schiovone against Yanina Wickmayer, the winner here will meet Justine Henin in round two.

This will be first time back from serious back injury for Safina in almost 4 months, and even though she has retained her ranking it must be doubtful that she can reproduce her form after such a long lay off.

For Ana Ivanovic, who declined an invitation to play for Serbia in the Fed Cup and failed to even show up to support her team, a first round loss to Radwanska  in Stuttgart may be enough to send her further down the rankings into oblivion.

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Melanie Oudin begins USA’s quest to reach a second successive Final, as she faces Alla Kudryavtseva in the opening rubber of the Fed Cup by BNP Paribas semifinal in Birmingham, Alabama.

Oudin, who adopts the role as American No. 1 in the absence of the Williams sisters, is ranked nearly 50 places higher than her Russian opponent.

Despite this gap in the world standings, however, the only previous meeting between the two players – coming earlier this year at the Australian Open – ended in a three-set victory for Kudryavtseva.

Dementieva is carrying the weak Russian team on her back, and must win both her singles matches for Russia to have any chance at all. The US has the best doubles team, and needs 2 singles victories to reach the final.

The second rubber sees Bethanie Mattek-Sands take on Elena Dementieva, the world No. 6, in a real ‘David v Goliath’ clash. Mattek-Sands will take confidence from her win over Alize Cornet of France in February’s first round, but playing Dementieva will bring about a completely different challenge.

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