Helsinki Tuesday: Dustin Brown makes people take notice

Day 2 of the main draw action here in Helsinki started with singles matches played on three courts. I decided to focus first on the match played on my favorite Court 3 between the speedy German Phau and the young British hope Dan Evans.

Daniel Evans vs Bjorn Phau

When arrived to the court for a moment I thought Fernando Gonzalez was playing in the place of the Brit. Evans was sporting exactly the same look as Gonzalez usually does and he also kept shouting ‘Vamos!’ out loud each time he won a big point. Even some of his shots reminded of Gonzo, but with less power of course. The match turned out to be the best quality tennis of the day. In the first set Evans was able to control most of the rallies with a good mixture of attacking tennis and Phau seemed happy to just try to get everything back. That didn’t work out for the German and in the second set he became much more aggressive winning it in convincing style. The third set turned out to be a copy of the first set, where Evans used a lot of variety to take charge of the match. He showed cool nerves under pressure and earned the win by playing more positive tennis. Meanwhile on the other courts Koubek and Kamke had already won their matches very quickly, so next I wanted to see how Dustin Brown was doing on Court 4.

Dustin Brown vs Kevin Kim

There was a fair bit of people watching this match from the start. And they weren’t going to be disappointed with Brown’s performance. The tall Jamaican whipped the floor with Kevin Kim winning in two very easy sets. Brown was serving huge and hitting some big bombs from the baseline. One thing I noticed about him is that he looked very relaxed on the court. Kevin Kim on the other hand is a true journeyman in the sense that you could never tell he’s close to being Top 100 in the world based on today’s match. After this match I watched a bit of Przysiezny’s win over Levy, the Pole looked to be in a good shape. Bemelmans got lucky against the old man Dupuis who played some good ball in the second set, but then seemed to hurt his back at the start of the third and couldn’t serve at full pace anymore.

Jarkko Nieminen vs Petru-Alexandru Luncanu

Next it was time for Jarkko’s singles first round match against the Romanian Luncanu. The crowd had gathered nicely for this match, but it turned out to be a very quick and one-sided contest. It took 56 minutes from Nieminen to wrap this match up in a convincing fashion. The Romanian had no weapon to hurt the home hero and made quite a few easy mistakes. It wasn’t a big test for Jarkko, but his game looked very solid today. That’s a good place to start with and every win here will get him closer to that AO main draw place.

Next I headed back to Court 3 to watch the end of match between last year’s finalist Beck and the young Russian Donskoy. Donskoy had a couple of set points to take the match into a decider, but Beck was more solid under pressure and was able to finish the match in two. The last match I watched was the doubles contest out on Center Court between the fourth seeds Friedl/Skoch and the young Finnish pair Heliövaara/Laaksonen. It was a positive match from the Finns, they played a great second set, but in the end the experience told in the match tiebreak. At one stage in the second set Laaksonen hit three aces in a row, but couldn’t make the fourth one.

Also some off court gossip today; your reporter spotted the (so far) not-so-well-known Russian tennis beauty Elena Chalova (http://www.itftennis.com/womens/play...ayer=100012207) in the crowd watching the action on the outer courts. Why is she here? I’ll try to find that out tomorrow. It should be another good day of tennis with the highly anticipated Kontinen vs Berrer match firmly on top of the agenda. Robin Haase also continues his comeback and the big hitting Jamaican Dustin Brown is again sure to create a buzz around Court 3.

Ville Talvenmaa