Australian Open: Unseeded Jo-Wilfried Tsonga destroys Rafael Nadal to Reach the Final!

6-2, 6-3, 6-2. Less than two hours. 'Nuff said.

In that short match, Tsonga hit 49 winners, 17 aces and broke Nadal's serve five times.

Nadal:

He played better than me, and for that reason he beat me. His running was unbelievable, physically he was very explosive, everything. What I can say? There was nothing bad about his game.

A few days ago I thought about a post contesting the proposition that France is about to dominate the tennis world. Not on the grounds that France doesn't have a whole passel of great tennis players, but on the grounds that none seem to have that "fire in the belly" of a great champion.

I think maybe I was wrong!

Hey, you gotta like a guy who looks so much like "the greatest and the prettiest," don't you?


Tsonga is ranked 38th in the world and eliminated Andy Murray, Richard Gasquet, and Mikhail Youzhny before doing his thing to Rafael Nadal today. He will face either world number one Roger Federer or third seed Novak Djokovic (who play on Friday) in the final on Sunday.

Nina Rota over at Tennis Diary has a nice piece on Tsonga's game: Is Tsonga Only a Serve and Volleyer?

Judging by his defeat of Andy Murray in the first round, you'd probably say so. Especially when he's so successful at charging the net like that on a relatively slow hardcourt. Indeed, his friend and compatriot, Richard Gasquet, who knows Tsonga's game well, felt compelled to do the attacking himself. Taking the net to keep it away from Tsonga? No matter, Tsonga won from the baseline, looking like Federer beating Gasquet from there.

So, it appears that we may have something new here, a truly all-court player.

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