Having a blast

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.”

Story Continues →