

Fernando Gonzalez plays tennis the way Mike Tyson used to box. The way Donald Rumsfeld holds a news conference. The way Donald Trump wears his hair.
Which is to say, a tad aggressively.
Put simply, Gonzalez is not the sort of player who frets over missing a few shots. Or even a few dozen.
A hard-hitting Chilean and the No.4 seed at the Legg Mason Tennis Classic, Gonzalez instead works the court like Pollock working a canvas, spraying outrageous winners — and equally outlandish errors — in every direction.
And he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Ever since I was 6, 7 years old, I started to play like this,” Gonzalez said with a smile. “I try to enjoy the game. I like the way that I play. And I know that a lot of people will enjoy watching.”
For Gonzalez, enjoyment and success go racket in hand. Behind a grip-it-and-rip-it game to shame John Daly, Gonzalez has emerged as one of the Tour’s top talents, a crowd-pleasing 23-year-old ranked No.14 in the world.
Gonzalez notched a 6-2, 6-4 second-round victory over France’s Julien Beneteau yesterday on the grandstand court at the William H.G. FitzGerald Tennis Center in Northwest.
“I’m an aggressive player, so I feel that every point depends on me,” Gonzalez said. “I prefer that to letting the other guy do it.”
Indeed. To note that Gonzalez favors a high-risk style would be an understatement. In reality, it’s more like zero-sum. Or maybe just manic-depressive.
Watch his crackling game in action, and you half-expect his teutonic winners to buy the entire room a round of drinks — while his errant blasts sulk off to a dark corner.
Case in point: Gonzalez’s loss to Sjeng Schalken in last year’s U.S. Open quarterfinals. In a wild, five-set match that included three tiebreakers, Gonzalez had 12 aces, 12 double-faults, 73 winners and 73 unforced errors.
(And no, we’re not making that up. Frankly, who would believe us?)
“I thought I was in the middle of a hurricane,” Schalken said afterward. “I was a little depending on him, on his mood. Sometimes he was hitting winners, then all of a sudden he hits one ball in the stand. And then he hits three winners again.”
View Entire StoryBy H. Leighton Steward
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