The Del potro forehand is simply a monster. At 4-2 in the 2nd, he hit 3 MASSIVE forehands. IMHO it wasn?t all Sod making errors but Delpos brute force with unrelenting pace causing Sod to rush through his shots and hence cause the errors. Quite frankly, if he is in top form, there is no one in this quarter that can stop him from reaching the semis. Maybe ferrer can challenge him, but he lacks the firepower to hurt del potro. He will probably lose to djokovic in the semis, although I would expect a matchup between the two to be close.

Polito SMASH! LOL!

Here's hoping he has enough gas to get through to the semis and do well. He looks like the heat is getting to him a little, still building up his stamina, but the crowd may lift him up.

Vamos!

His forehand might not be the prettiest shot in the tour but it certainly gets the job done!
I've never seen anyone mistreating the ball so much - at times it looks painful - like swatting a big bug or something :)

@Shireling, 3/29/11 6:27 PM
Today it didn't get the job done.

Congratulations to Fish for a great victory over Delpo! He played some brilliant tennis and Delpo seemed to once again be battling the heat and fatigue. It's great to see Delpo back and playing well, however maybe this was a bit of a reality check.

Del Po is overhyped, probably by the Fed fans. He is not going to win any slams before US Open and frankly I think Djokovic, Nadal and Murray in that order are more likely to win that slam too.
Many Fed fans have pinned their hopes on Del Po to deprive Rafa of French Open but Djoko is more likely to do that than Delpo. I think they are jealous about Rafa's stranglehold on clay. While Fed has been dominant on grass and hardcourts, his dominance has never seemed like the kind of mastery which Rafa has over clay. Rafa seems to own clay.
Attempts have been made by Fed fans to discount clay and slow surfaces. They express contempt for clay courters, describing them as 1-d (echoing the great Fed himself) but they have a hard time reconciling with the reality that clay courters are proving better on all surfaces than people who did not train on clay.

To borrow a headline "Fish Crushes Delpotro." What a difference a day makes! Delpot looked very unfit to me.

If Delpo's serve is not working then his forehand alone will not save him. There is a little bit of hype over merit about Delpo because of his USO wins over Rafa and Federer which is more significant because he won a GS as a result of it, under any other circumstances, everyone would have forgotten about it by now.

He's won a handful of minor titles plus the USO so why is he being talked about in such glowing terms like he is going to win everything in sight.

Mardy's win over Delpo just goes to show that in tennis, and life in general, ANYTHING can happen!! People are already threatening that Novak will beat Rafa on clay............sorry...............I will not hold my breath! I prefer to wait till the clay season starts to see what happens..........frankly that way is a whole lot more exciting!!!


I hope Rafa does not buy into the hype and believe he has to outdo himself becos its being said that he might lose his dominance on clay this season. And I hope Fed is not losing sleep over what people are saying about him being on the decline!!!

I just always remember what those same people said........................Rafa will NEVER win the US Open!!!!!...................blah, blah, blah, blah blah!!!!!

VAMOS Rafa!!!!

Exactly my sentiments Nadline. He suddently became flavour of the month by winning those four minor back to back titles in 2008 when most people were hanging out at the Olympics! But I cant help remembering his dismal (bordering on disgraceful) effort at the 2009 AO which was in such stark contrast to his win later in the year at the USO. He is undoubtedly tough competition when he is on form but I suspect he will always be inconsistent.