Yesterday, Rafa met Alexandr Dogopolov - who he described as a "crazy player" - in his fourth round encounter. He's only played him once before, and really, Dolly is just so, well I'll say it again, unconventional.
Rafa, however, looked as mean and down to business as we've seen him in a long while. To be honest, he looks to me like he's at his 2008 fabulousness, and his Game Face was on and his strut was much in evidence as he raced to a 5-2 lead. But then when Dolly starts playing his inhibited tennis without a care in the world, you can see those doubts of Rafa's set in again. He made hard work of the last couple of games to win the first set 6-3.
And the wobbles continued. He went 0-30 down on his opening serve, he faced break points, and sometimes you can still see how last year seems to have pricked him. But he picked it up, got through, and then raced away with the third set, till Dolly seemed to pick it up again. Again he laboured to win the set, 6-2, but the "easy" looking scoreline wasn't really quite all that.
His next opponent was once one of the original Rafaslayers. Time - and Rafa - have moved on from them. And whilst I believe that Rafa knows that David will play well at times in the match, I still think he will feel more comfortable against playing someone he knows in Nalbandian than what he showed last night at times against Dolgopolov.
Lets look forward to it ...
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