"I have been working a lot on my legs to improve my baseline play. The problem was that I got too comfortable with it in the first set and went along with his game, which is hitting 1000 rallies," said Prakash on the first.

Amritraj .. left his opponent numbed with some brilliant all-round game. Essentially a serve and volley specialist, Amritraj showed that he could also adapt to the baseline if the situation warranted it, as he scripted a comeback .... showed that he had the weapons to hurt people in the top-100, if not top-50. Of late, Amritraj has been honing his skills to match the ‘power-players’ from the baseline; he has put in good hours on the court and in the gym and the result is there for all to see.  “It’s a sign of maturity and if I can keep this level up, mentally I can make it,” Amritraj was to say later. 

Sometimes, in the space of three months, your whole game can change. It was not Prakash of old who would just attempt to serve and close in on the net. His patience and perseverance was worth admiring .. If in the end, Prakash was stringing the points together in a better fashion, it had to do with his consistency and gameplan. Europeans and the Yanks can run side to side, or funnel back and forth without legs getting tired .. But to see Prakash show such good court coverage, going for the short ball and ripping winners was a delight. "I stayed low and it helped," he said explaining the success behind his backhand. "And I have worked hard on my fitness after the tendon tear in my foot," added Prakash.

His serve and volley game is such a potent weapon if he can use that to win points rather than as his only bread-and-butter. I have always held that he has a pretty good baseline game if he decides to pull that out. Not sure if he is the type who can win sets by playing 1000 shot rallies contantly (as he found out in the first set today), but when the opponent knows that he is going to mix things in, you have completely got inside his brain!! .. I am sure PA made Mello think hard about what to do today. THAT is what a solid groundstrokes/baseline game does with serve and volley. If the opponent knows that he is going to rush the net every time and is going to commit to the serve and volley (Prakash used to pretty much telegraph it in, based on what I saw in the last year or two), it is easy for him to take P$ out of his game.

In a battle between tall men — Ram is 6 feet four while Bopanna is just two inches shorter — who prefer the serve and volley style of play, it was Bopanna who would keep fighting despite a spirited Ram giving him little quarter .. Being broken in his very first service game, ‘Bofors’ refused to lapse into his sullen mode and instead broke back in the sixth to make it 3-3 in the first. He would break Ram twice to lead 5-2 in the second before finally keeping his head together to serve out the match with an ace. His 16 aces proved to be the decisive factor in a match where he would win a total of 78 point, just two more than the loser.