Rome: Gulby Shocks Fed

Gulby was up a break in the 3rd and could not convert his first 6 MPs against Federror with two of 'em being double faults until Federror finally broke back to even the match at 5-all. Then Gulby returned the favor to break back as Federror's 1st serve disappeared (46% in 3rd set). Finally, he served at the match at love to score an upset: 2-6 6-1 7-5. The journos now have an official new victim for their slump category: Fed, who hadn't lost before the QFs in 3 consecutive tourneys since 2002.

In his presser, Gulby admitted that his mental state was terrible on all those MPs:

I shit my pants a little bit, sorry for my language ... I couldn't put a serve in. I was shaking. I didn't know what to do. It was a terrible feeling.

	Federer	Gulbis
Aces	2	8
DF	3	2
1st Serve %	56%	74%
1st Serve % Pts Won	35/53 (66%)	46/65 (71%)
2nd Serve % Pts Won	18/41 (44%)	11/24 (46%)
Unforced Errors	38	39
Winners	20	33
Break Points Won	3/6 (50%)	4/10 (40%)
Total Service Points Won	53/94 (56%)	57/89 (64%)
Total Points Won	83/183 (46%)	98/183 (54%)

It's fairly clear from the point total that Gulby just outplayed Fed and that Fed's 1st serve percentage was not good enough to earn him enough free points. Fed knew that his poor serve form lost the match.



Here's to hoping that Fed really wakes up, buckle down by winning ugly, and then begin to kick ass like he's supposed to. And just to squash any craziness from FedKADs, this cannot be a nefarious plot by Fed to pace himself through the clay court season. It's an all too common pattern for Fed to go downhill mid-match.


At least, Fed is still playing dubs.




In other news, Muzz got past Seppi at 2 and 4.



The Djoker baked a double breadstick for Chardy




In WTA news, Nails baked also two breadsticks for soccer chic, Errani.



Fun question: what is everyone but Fed doing in this blog post?