Gilles Simon is the best Frenchman still standing on the tour and likely to lead his country into the Davis Cup quarter-finals against Great Britain next month, if Gaël Monfils and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga do not recover from injury – but he left here another bashed-up loser after three thrilling sets against Kevin Anderson.
The Dog, as they call the 6ft 8in South African, won 6-3, 6-7 (6-8), 6-3 in an hour and 52 minutes, putting 34 aces past the world No13 to bring his tournament total to an astonishing 96 from four matches. Nobody has stood up to the brute speed and precision of his towering serve, although Simon – whose tongue-in-cheek description of himself is the Return Genius – did heroically well in defeat.
But averaging nearly 25 aces a match is power serving at its finest and any opponent of Anderson can find the task of just getting the ball back turning from tough to herculean pretty quickly.
They finished in sunshine but Anderson was left wondering who his next dartboard was going to be, as Andy Murray and Viktor Troicki were forced from the court for a second and final time by rain in the other semi-final, with the first set poised tantalisingly on break point to the Scot in the seventh game. They will resumeon Sunday at 11am, with the final not starting before 2.25pm.
There was drama enough to go with the interruption, as the Serb (not one of Murray’s favourite players on Tour after his ban for failing to provide a blood sample in 2013) took a painful tumble just before they withdrew for the first time, at 5.16pm.
Troicki overbalanced but stayed on his feet as he scrambled to retrieve a drop shot, then tumbled as he swerved right, his left shoulder taking all his weight and jamming awkwardly as he crashed to the turf. The grimace on his face told the story. It looked at first glance as if he could not easily lift his arm above the horizontal.
As he received treatment, the skies began to spit and Troicki got up from his chair to carry on, a gesture of defiance if not altogether the cleverest move of the day. The chair umpire intervened, however, and – after consulting the groundsman, Graham Kimpton – they all took a break from the weather.
The tension in the first semi-final was confined to the excellence of the play, with Simon fighting hard in every rally, guessing as best he could which way the next thunderous serve was going to fly.
Anderson revealed he had prepared for the short grass season at the Florida home of a golfing legend. “I was able to get up to Jack Nicklaus’s house,” he said. “He’s got three courts in Jupiter, only 30 minutes away from me. That was pretty special.
“My coach back home, Jay Bosworth, he’s been living there for ages, and he made some calls. The tennis community is so small; when somebody has three grass courts, most people know about it.
“Fortunately, Jack was kind enough to let us hit there. He’s let other pros come out before. Ivan Lendl did it way back with Jay as well. It was a nice few days up there.”
Getting down to business on court life was less of a fairytale. At 5-5 in the second-set tie-break, Anderson sent down his 24th ace – the fastest of the tournament at 141mph – for match point, but he botched a backhand and the Frenchman was still in it.
Simon’s insistence on going for the lines paid a dividend when Anderson, trapped awkwardly on the baseline, pushed his hurried reply on to the top of the net and the ball ballooned long to even up the contest at a set apiece.
Anderson went out for the deciding set carrying the baggage of failing to convert four break points. After an hour and a quarter of do-or-die tennis, would he stay on the tightrope or would he freeze? He kept blasting – and Simon, who took him to deuce for the first time in the opening game, kept soaking up the haymakers.
Sentiment was with Simon: more elegant, his two-fisted backhand not as ugly as some, a lovely mover across the lush lawn – but the power resided in Anderson’s racket still. Two more aces saved his serve from love-30 in the third game.
Simon, meanwhile, hit just his second ace of the match in the fourth game, and battled through two deuce points to hold. Anderson gambled and his huge forehand went a millimetre wide. About 10 minutes later, he went for the same spot, got the break point, and took it. He struck his 33rd ace for two match points. Simon saved one with a blazing crosscourt winner – but there was nothing he could do about the 34th and final ace. Simon twice came from a set down to stay in the tournament. Not this time.
France’s fortunes suffered elsewhere too. Monfils and Tsonga look doubtful for Wimbledon, which starts on Monday week – and they might also be struggling to make the Davis Cup quarter-final against Great Britain, which is here at Queen’s the weekend after the championships.
Monfils injured his right abductor muscle when he slipped on the grass in the second game of his quarter-final against Andreas Seppi at Halle on Friday, and could be out for up to six weeks. The Italian, unbelievably, then got a second retirement win when Kei Nishikori quit after five games, and he now plays Roger Federer in the Gerry Weber Open final on Sunday. Federer withstood a barrage of 20 aces by Ivo Karlovic – who brought his week’s total to 114 – to win 7-6 (7-3), 7-6 (7-4).
