[Brian Swartz]

Australian Open

Girish Girsh came in winless in 5 Slam matches, with some incredibly unlucky draws contributing to that. This time he had a very average first-round draw, with China's Lan-Feng Chen as his opponent. Chen could match him from the baseline, but his weak serve was exposed in a 6-2, 7-6(2), 6-3 straight-sets win as Girsh finally broke his streak of failures.

Next up was 22nd-seeded Manfred Borrman(SWE), who was about as good a matchup as he could hope to have from a seeded player. Borrman is a bit past his peak, and after a tense first-set tiebreak, Girsh eliminated him in three as well! All the fun looked to come to a dead end in the third round, with Perry Hogue waiting. The American was in for a bit of a surprise though. Girsh fought back to take the second set ... and again in the fourth after being blanked in the third ... but in the fifth he wilted again. I don't think I've ever said a player did well after being breadsticked and bageled, but such was the case in this strange match. Hogue won as expected but not without a fight, 6-4, 4-6, 6-0, 4-6, 6-1.

And so it was that in his first Slam that he won a match in, Girsh reached the round of 32, and pushed the world #5 to a fifth set. That's one heck of a way to start the year, and it moves him up to 35th. I don't think he'll move higher for a while, but it pushes him very close to an important threshold. At 32nd, he would be seeded for Slams and the big Masters(IW/Miami), and also ineligible for challengers. That's pretty much the point at which a player switches from 'training' mode to 'elite competitor' status. So that's something that will be watched closely. He's almost there.

As for Anil Mehul, the draw set up very well for him also. From Paris last year on, a lot of things have been breaking his way after they really didn't for a few months leading up to that. Such is the nature of this profession. The first three rounds were yawn-fests as one might expect, even more so than usual as he didn't face a single seed. David Prieto was as good a matchup as you could have in the fourth, still good enough to potentially cause an upset. First set was tense, but it got progressively easier after that: 7-6(5), 6-4, 6-2. A good warmup for the real stage, as it were.

Julian Hammerstein was up next, having survived a five-set epic against Elder; he was the only guy to reach the quarters who was not a Top-8 seed. It looks he's set to make a little more noise this year as expected, but as usual he overplayed coming in, taking the singles title in Sydney the week before. It definitely cost him here as Mehul was the fresher player. The first two sets were a war, but Hammerstein couldn't keep up the pace and Anil advanced to the AO semis for a second year in a row, 7-6(6), 5-7, 6-2, 6-3.

There was more good news. At this level you expect two players to be waiting, and they were: but Iglar was on the other side of the draw. Bjorn Benda was next, definitely the more palatable of the two. Mehul snagged the first set, and it looked like disaster might set in after he failed to serve out the second. He rattled off five straight points to win the breaker and go up two sets to none ... but the German wasn't through. He fought back to take a close third ... and a close fourth ... and the fifth was what it should be at this stage: an all-out struggle. Both players missed chances, but at the end Mehul had a pair of match points, but couldn't break in the 12th game, but he looked the stronger player. It took two more the next time of asking, but he finally survived and moved on to his first Grand Slam final! It was the match of the tournament, 6-3, 7-6(2), 4-6, 4-6, 8-6! Uncharacteristically, Mehul pulled off the upset by having a particularly good serving day.

And of course, that meant the final against Antonin Iglar. There was more than a little hope here after he'd almost knocked him off in the WTC a few weeks ago. Iglar had looked vulnerable against the Russians in this tournament, having to rally from down two sets to one against Goncharenko in the fourth round, then having Topolski do everything but take a second-set tiebreak that he eventually won by an epic 15-13 count. Had that gone the other way, and there were a number of set points on Topolski's serve that could have made it do so, who knows what happens in that much. But he survived.

Unfortunately, it was pretty anticlimactic. No signs of such vulnerability were to be found. To the contrary, Iglar had one of those days. He was in the zone, as they say, and put forward a display of some of the best tennis that has ever been played. I don't think there are five players, if that many, in the history of the game who could have threatened him on this day. Mehul was able to stay with him for about half of the second set, and that was it. The final was 6-2, 6-3, 6-1, with the Czech repeating after converting six of seven break chances(the one miss was among Anil's four aces). A tough fall, but when he plays at that level there's nothing you can do but shake his hand and try again next time. Still, a fantastic run here obviously that gets the year off to a great start, but tough to reach the pinnacle and not get it done. Who knows how many, if any even, more Slam finals he will get a chance at? As for Iglar, he's now matched Benda in Slams(4), Tour Finals(1), and Masters(6); not in weeks at #1 but in another year he'll surpass him in that to. The winning streak now stands at a ridiculous 51 consecutive matches. That seems unlikely to fall before the clay season.

Prakash Mooljee reached the semis in Lima, winning in doubles, and with that will have a prolonged period on the practice courts, probably close to two months. Coming up next is the second round of the WTC against top-ranked and defending world champion Spain.