With all four of the previous champions at the Queen’s Club failing to reach the quarter-finals of the Aegon Championships, the door was opened for a new name on one of the biggest and most beautiful trophies in tennis.
And despite the loss of defending champion Andy Murray in the third round, there was no shortage of star power to rise to the challenge. Indeed the top two seeds were still in place, world No3 Stan Wawrinka at the top of the draw and No6 Tomas Berdych at the bottom.
In between them was such a variety of players that it was becoming almost impossible to assess who would still be standing come semi-finals Saturday.
One of the final four was known early: the youngest player in the top 20, 23-year-old Grigor Dimitrov, did not have to lift a finger as he advanced to his second Queen’s semi-final courtesy of the withdrawal of Alexandr Dolgopolov.
In the bottom half of the draw were the only two men with grass titles to their names.
Berdych was one of them, with a Halle title, and he also boasted that very rare thing, a Wimbledon final finish. The other was Feliciano Lopez, winner in Eastbourne last year for the first time at the age of 31 and, lest it be forgotten, a three-time Wimbledon quarter-finalist.
The two now faced each other in what promised to be most balanced contest in the draw: They had alternated wins in their eight previous matches. But these owners of strong grass credentials had never faced on another on the green stuff.
And Berdych served well enough to hold his own, except that Lopez began to serve even better, and once that facet of his game was in the groove, all his grass-court skill followed: volleying whenever possible, slicing his backhand to the lines, making drop shots even straight after his serve.
It was classic, fast-grass stuff, and played by a left-hander to make the shots even more devastating.
Lopez dropped only five points from 48 first serves, hit 13 aces—one at over 140mph—and came back from 6-3 down in the second set tie-break to advance to the semis, 6-4, 7-6(7).
And remarkably, he would go on to face another serve-and-volley player from the old school, a man whose best run at Queen’s came almost a decade back, a semi finish in 2005.
The veteran of the pack was the 35-year-old Radek Stepanek, who had not dropped a set in his three matches thus far—even though he faced defending champion Andy Murray.
Stepanek’s long career had taken him to a singles ranking of No8 in 2006 and a couple of Masters finals in the process, but he had never won, nor even reached, a final on grass, even from his 17 doubles titles.
Despite missing three months of 2013 undergoing neck surgery, he went on to win the US Open doubles title with Leander Paes and, currently ranked 42 in singles, had already taken a set off both Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal this spring.
And Stepanek’s prodigious doubles skills shone on the Queen’s grass again in beating the huge-serving No18 ranked Kevin Anderson. The Czech is playing doubles at Queen’s as well as singles, but he came back from a set down with his serve and volley, slice and drop-shot tennis to win 1-6, 6-3, 6-2—and the crowd loved it.
When it came to, Wawrinka, though, his grass results have been far from his best.
Wimbledon has been the only Major not to yield at least a quarter-final finish, and in his only previous visit to Queen’s three years ago, he lost in the first round. Last year, he reached the final of his first grass event, in s’Hertogonbosch, but his big results—such as his first Major, his first Masters—came on hard and clay courts.
But the 29-year-old Swiss has made a habit of breaking new ground at every turn during the last couple of years. If anyone has a backhand designed for grass, it is surely Wawrinka’s, and few who saw his stunning five-set match against Murray at Wimbledon in 2009 will forget its quality on grass.
He played the No60-ranked Marinko Matosevic, who had also serve and volleyed his way through the likes of Marin Cilic and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, though there were signs that he was starting to feel the physical stress in his legs. He had, after all, won an ATP Challenger event on grass in Nottingham last week.
The first set was very closely contested, with both players dropping only two points on their first serve, but Wawrinka was already showing a slight edge with the only couple of break chances in the set and seven aces to Matosevic’s two. But it looked as though it would go to the wire when the Australian served a love game to level at 5-5.
The trouble was, he did indeed start to look leg-heavy, and that almost certainly contributed to a weak game when he served to take it to a tie-breaker. A double fault handed the break to Wawrinka for the set, 7-5.
Matosevic also looked a beaten man as soon as Wawrinka broke in the second game of he next set. The Swiss looked energised by the lead, but his opponent was not totally done. He roused himself to produce some more good serves, and indeed Wawrinka did not earn another break point. The trouble was, he didn’t offer up a break point either, dropping only three points on his first serve and five on his second in the set.
It was a sharp, confident performance from the Swiss that will certainly help to rub out the disappointment of his first-round exit at Roland Garros.
So in a battle of the one-handers, Wawrinka and Dimitrov will fight to reach their first grass final and, just as in the Lopez/Stepanek contest, there is sure to be plenty of attack—and not a little old-fashioned chip-and-charge, volley and drop shot action—on show on what is forecast to be another scorcher in South Ken.