Wimbledon rd1 - Baker v Seppi

admin · Wimbledon rd1 - Baker v Seppi

Rd1 preview: Jamie will open his Wimbledon campaign against Italian clay-court specialist and world no 68, Andreas Seppi. Seppi has had most of his success on clay but this year he's been building up some form on grass, winning a round at ATP Halle straight after the French Open and then impressively reaching the semis of ATP Nottingham this week, beating British no 2 Andy Murray, along the way. However, prior to the past couple of weeks, Seppi has had a very poor record on fast courts. He lost in straight sets at Wimbledon in his 1st appearance last year and has hardly won a match on fast indoor courts on the ATP tour. Also, earlier this year he was beaten by British no 4 Alex Bogdanovic on indoor carpet in a challenger event in Bergamo. A big incentive for Jamie is that the winner is likely to face one of the legends of the game, Andre Agassi in rd2 which would be quite a special match as this will definately be Agassi's last appearance at Wimbledon. Jamie was delighted with the draw saying "The draw has been quite good to me, I'm definitely happy with it. Seppi's predominantly a clay court player, ranked between 70 and 100 and if that wasn't enough, they've given me the incentive of a match with Agassi if I win." Baker v Seppi will be on Tuesday.

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Rd1: A Seppi [It] bt J Baker [GB] 6-3, 6-7, 6-4, 6-3

Report: Jamie produced a fine performance to push Italy's Andreas Seppi close but eventually the fatigue from playing his first best of 5 sets match set in and he lost a pulsating encounter 3-6, 7-6, 4-6, 3-6. At times it looked like Jamie was the world no 68, not the 22 year old Italian as the 19 year old from Glasgow dominated from the baseline with fierce groundstrokes off both wings.
Jamie got off to a nervy start in the match being broken twice early in the 1st set with too many unforced errors and Seppi took a 5-2 lead and served for the set. However, Jamie played several superb points on the Seppi serve, moving the Italian round the court and then finishing off at the net with crisp volleys to retrieve one of the breaks and make it 5-3. Unfortunately, Jamie was made to pay the penalty in the next game for missing too many 1st serves and he was broken again to concede the set as Seppi let rip from the baseline. Seppi's brutal baseline hitting was really the story of set 1 - he crunched an amazing 16 winners compared to 6 from Jamie.
The 2nd set was a different story as Jamie upped the tempo from the baseline and started to attack the Italian more. He broke to lead 3-2 with 3 deep returns forcing errors from Seppi and then secured the break with a magnificent passing shot on the run at 15-40 leaving Seppi completely stranded at the net. Looking to consolidate the break in his next service game, Jamie got the better of several long rallies to move to 40-15 but then showed his inexperience by making 4 straight unforced errors to hand the break back to the Italian, making it 3-3. The rest of the set went with serve and it went into a tiebreak where Jamie was the player who kept his cool, taking advantage of some erratic play from Seppi to take it 7-3. Although Seppi hit more 7 winners than Jamie in set 2, the telling fact was that Seppi hit twice as many unforced errors and Jamie was winning a lot more points on his 2nd serve than the Italian.
Into the 3rd set and Jamie stormed to a 3-0 lead completely outplaying Seppi from the back of the court. The Italian looked to have no answer to Jamie's mixture of spins and angles and forays to the net. The turning point in this set happened with Jamie serving at 3-1. He received a dreadful line call when serving at break point down - his sliced 2nd serve out wide clearly struck the line and would have been a service winner but it was inexplicably called out and the set was back on serve. Boosted by this, Seppi started to read Jamie's serve better than before and he started to take the initiative on the return. This meant that Jamie started most of the rallies on the back foot. He could do nothing to prevent a 2nd break of serve and Seppi took the set 6-4. The telling statistic in this set was that Jamie was only able to win 23% of the points on his 2nd serve, showing Seppi's increased aggression on the return.
In the 4th set Jamie was unable to win a single point on his 2nd serve but he kept fighting, Seppi led 3-0 and then 4-1 with a double break but Jamie broke back for 4-2 with a string of clean winners. Seppi broke straight back for 5-2 and then had match point on his own serve but Jamie refused to give up, saving it and then breaking again through a mixture of determination and skill. Unfortunately, Seppi's returns proved too powerful and he broke serve to take the match.
Speaking afterwards, Jamie looked to take the positives from his first Grand Slam match and vowed that he'll be back "I'm disappointed," he said "Once I took the 2nd set tiebreak I thought I was controlling the match, but it wasn't to be. However, my coach agrees I've moved up a level and I'm confident I can compete with the very best."
Jamie had plenty of family support in the crowd for his match and his parents were delighted with his performance. Mum Lynn, a schoolteacher, said "He played so well, at one point I really thought he could win. It would have meant so much to Jamie to play Andre Agassi who he came up against last week and narrowly lost to." Dad Gordon said "He has played really well, all he wants to do is get on a tennis court again and do well. I'm sure he will."
Jamie was watched by many British tennis fans on the web and on digital TV and they all felt it was really promising for the future. Niall from Edinburgh said "There were some real flashes of brilliance in there from Jamie. That was the first time I've seen him play a full match and I was impressed by his movement and willingness to chase everything. Having seen Jamie's shot-making ability and his will to win I'm confident that he can push his ranking a lot higher."
Jamie now heads to the USA for a series of tournaments beginning with the Aptos Challenger in a couple of weeks time. Stay tuned to this site for all the latest news !
In the press: Go to http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/hi/news/5054210.html for the Glasgow Evening Times' report of Baker v Seppi

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Although he lost this was an excellent performance from Jamie against a guy who gave Agassi quite a few problems in rd2. Jamie's shot-making and rallying have both really improved in the last 6 months in which time his game has definately gone up several levels. At times there wasn't really much between Seppi and Jamie at all despite the ranking difference. The only real difference between them was Jamie's 2nd serve which was exploited by Seppi throughout the match, he needs to work on that and get more bite and variety on it.

Jamie was really unlucky in the 3rd set as he was up a break and had the momentum and if he hadn't have received that dodgy line call, he could well have gone on to lead 2 sets to 1.