But Every Picture Certainly Tells a Story!Sometimes the facts do tell a story but always "Every Picture Tells a Story".
At any rate...here is the petulant one Alexander Zverev making a statement at his after match chat with the press. But Stefanos is ready for the belly-aching. He handles it with spin...you spin to me, I spin to you. Zverev tried to take all of the credit away from his opponent who he had defeated the week before but came up short in Montreal...or wherever they were. You'll have to forgive me. Jet Lag. I've been out of it.
Tsitsipas is extremely clever and he further demonstrates this in the interview. He cleverly handles the spin from Zverev that neither player played well. He ignores the comment and then he lays on a haymaker. He says he outsmarted the petulant one. This is another aspect or perhaps the singular most likeable aspect of young Stefanos...he is extremely clever. I noticed that on a key point with Kevin Anderson he hit such a clever lob over the giant South African. Tsitsipas knows how to play shots that give him a shot of getting back into a point in seemingly impossible situations and he does it many times with clever lobs.
He is young and still very wet behind the ears and you see this at times. I thought he looked a bit amateurish in his loss at Wimbledon against big serving John Isner. Not a particularly easy player to play against. But he shows a tremendous amount of resilience in that if you beat him once he is going to come back at you the next time. He is not overly impressed with anyone and this showed against Nadal as well. Nadal has beaten him a couple of times but he doesn't show any quit in him. He can get behind a set and he is not out of the match. Not by any stretch of the imagination and not against anyone. I look forwards to the first match he plays against Roger Federer. We might just see a replay of when the young Federer met an ageing Pete Sampras at Wimbledon.
Tsitsipas reminds me a bit of Bjorn Borg in a sense. He showed great promise in the interview room as well. The very first time I saw him play I was intrigued by the possibilities. It's great to see everyone else jumping on board...for instance the announcers etc. I do worry about his over hype now much as it has all but confused Alexander Zverev. I don't see the same potential in the Zverev game as I do in Tsitsipas. You see...Stefanos is going to be developing a lot over the next couple of years. He still has a tremendous amount of potential which is another way of saying he has a lot of room for improvement. With his style of game there are limitless possibilities because you can factor in net play and approach tactics whereas Zverev is forever a baseliner like his model Novak Djokovic. Obviously Djokovic has had great success but he may just have reached his limit...a lot sooner than say a Roger Federer who likewise had so much potential that he only needed to change his racquet to realize even more of that deep well of potential.
All that I can say about Stefanos is that it is wonderful to hear him talk so reasonably and soundly. His mention of outwitting an opponent really resonates with me. Why try and "overpower" an opponent who is based solely on power? Throw in a bit of clever play and take him out of his game. After all...what is power? Control is power. What is Control? Control is various combinations of three components...speed, spin and placement. There aren't too many players out there talking about the game like Stefanos did in this short interview. In fact I can only think of one.
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