Ginepri stepping up in a big way Wants Davis Cup spot; Driver's former squeeze
has new girlfriend
By Eleanor Preston
Special to tennisreporters.net
Art Seitz
Robbie is having best Slam ever.
FROM THE AUSTRALIAN OPEN – Robby Ginepri
is putting together a promising little run of form at the Australian
Open this week.
Having dispatched his much tipped third-round opponent Nicolas Escude
is surprisingly easy fashion, 6-2, 6-3, 6-4, Ginepri could be poised
for an assault on the second week. He faces the always elusive Sebastien
Grosjean in the fourth round in what, he said, "could be a
pretty long match."
Wants Davis Cup spot Ginepri
has another reward in his sights too – a place in the US Davis
Cup team for the tie against Austria. "I guess (US Captain)
Patrick McEnroe will have a hard decision to make with James Blake,
Taylor Dent and myself all doing well," said Ginepri. "This
is as good a position as I can get myself in if I want to make the
team, I don't think there is much more I can do than concentrate
on my results here. It's going to come down to how Pat feels we
can all do out there."
McEnroe, down in Melbourne on duty for US TV as well as his Davis
Cup commitments, will certainly have been impressed with Ginepri's
showing against Escude, a wildcard in every sense of the word. The
Frenchman is a flashy, unpredictable player with a penchant for
serve and volleying and the kind of record here (he's a former quarter-finalist)
which might have suggested a tougher match for Ginepri.
It's been a long road to respectability to Ginepri, the soft-spoken
Georgian who was a clear-cut No. 2 behind Andy Roddick in the juniors.
After Roddick spanked him in the 2000 U.S. Open junior final, Roddick
immediately became the anointed successor to Sampras, Agassi, et
al, where Ginepri was merely placed in the may-have-a-respectable-but-not-great-career
crowd.
After the Aussie Open is over, the quick all-courter will have cracked
the top 30 and with his rapid rate of improvement over the past
year, he has a very good shot at ending the year in the top-20.
Ginepri might even beat out Blake, Dent and Fish in the year-end
points race, an accomplishment that would mean a tremendous amount
to the goal-orientated 21-year-old.
A few months ago, beating the likes of Doha champ and Davis Cup
hero Escude in a Slam might have been beyond Ginepri, but having
spent the off-season out on the practice court with endless buckets
of balls in the hope of improving his serve, the 2004 Ginepri is
a tougher prospect. He'll have to crack up his heater against Grosjean,
who he admitted owned him before last week, when he tripped up the
Frenchman in an exo in Kooyong, a win that he added was very important
to him mentally.
"I spent a lot of extra time trying to improve my serve because
I really thought it was a weakness before," he explained. "Now
I'm going out there and putting a little bit more pop on the ball
and that showed today. I didn't drop my [against Escude] and it
put a lot of pressure on him."
Driver's former squeeze has new girlfriend
Art Seitz
Ginepri and Driver – when
they were an item.
The serve isn't the only thing that has
changed in Ginepri's life. He split with movie star girlfriend Minnie
Driver in October and is now seeing an old friend from high school,
who he refers to, in front of journalists at least, only as Josephine.
"She's a bit more low-profile," said Ginepri with a smile.
"It's kind of nice that I don't have to worry about cameras
flashing in my face when I come out of clubs any more."
Ginepri has been spending his downtime in Melbourne with fellow
Americans Dent, Blake and Mardy Fish trying his luck at the Crown
casino, where many of the players stay during the tournament. "I've
been losing a fair bit though," admitted Ginepri.
"Maybe it wouldn't be such a good thing if I made the Davis
Cup squad after all, seeing as it's being held in a casino!"
America's Band of Brothers continues to be as close as ever and
now as much a locker room clique as the Spanish, the French or the
South Americans. It's the kind of built-in social life that Ginepri
says makes life on the tour a lot easier to take.
"I like having friends with me every where I go," he said.
"When you have people around to talk to you don't have to think
about tennis all the time. I like to focus on a match maybe a couple
of hours before I play and think about other stuff the rest of the
time. It keeps me happy having those guys around."
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