In my sizeable collection of mid 90s CDs, there is one with a title that crossed my mind this morning. Thinking ahead to Casper Ruud´s match against Felix Auger-Aliassime (FAA), I remembered a noisy album from 1996 called Now I got worry, which is precisely what I had leading up to the match.
Casper Ruud has not had the best results lately, whereas FAA has had just that, winning three indoor tournaments this fall. This could get ugly.
But then the match started, and Ruud was up for it. He held serve with four straight points in the first game. He kept his backhands deep, and FAA kept targeting it even when that tactic wasn´t working. In general, Ruud made FAA wonder where all the recent tailwind from European indoor arenas had gone. It certainly wasn´t in Turin, that´s for sure.
Ruud took the first set in a tiebreak, and kept pushing in the second. FAA looked strangely off throughout the match, even though he served some aces and showed flashes of brilliance. The surface in Turin seems nice and slow for Ruud´s brand of tennis, the kick serves jumping high. Ruud faced no break points in the match.
Ruud is up against Taylor Fritz, also a straight set winner today (against Nadal), on Tuesday night.
(Why is this Norwegian guy writing in English? At a party this weekend, a friend and fanatical tennisbloggen.net fan suggested I should write in English in order to conquer the world or something like that. (Memories are slightly fuzzy.) I have not written English texts of any substance or length since the Clinton presidency, but will write in English for the rest of 2022 just for the fun of it and see if my numbers go through the roof. Please excuse my rusty grammar and spelling. If I run out of steam and/or receive loads of online fury from Norwegian language activists, I will switch to Norwegian and claim the blog was hijacked by forces outside my control.)