Frank Dancevic joins Vasek Pospisil and Milos Raonic in the singles main draw at Indian Wells

INDIAN WELLS – Down a set and two breaks of serve in the second set to a talented German named Philipp Petzschner, the odds of Frank Dancevic joining Davis Cup teammates Milos Raonic and Vasek Pospisil in the main singles draw at the BNP Paribas Open looked, well, pretty non-existent.

But instead of going out in a blaze of foolhardy Frank glory, the 30-year-old Canadian decided to change a losing game.

“He was killing me with the slice the whole match. I didn’t really know what to do. The courts are really slow. He wasn’t missing much. He was working the point. At 3-0 (down) I just said, ‘Look, I have to change something because the way it’s going, I’m going to lose 7-5, 6-0,’ ” Dancevic said after a 5-7, 6-4, 6-1 victory that put him in the main draw, where he will face Alexandr Dolgopolov of Ukraine.

Dancevic started slowing the pace of his ball down quite a big, even – gasp! – throwing in a few moonballs to Petzschner’s backhand.

Suddenly, Petzschner started making mistakes, and Dancevic, as he is known to do, started making some shots. Big-time, flashy, on-the-run shots.

The adrenaline was pumping; Dancevic even saved a break point with a serve clocked at 130 mph – far beyond his usual ceiling.

“I feel like I just broke his game down. In the third set, whenever I was a little out of position, I’d just go safe, loop it to his backhand and start the point over again,” he said. “I wouldn’t risk it. Usually I would try to go for stupid shots.”

In a nutshell, Dancevic played smart, mature tennis. Yes, you read that correctly.

“That’s right. I just played smart mature tennis today,” Dancevic agreed, with a laugh. “How did it look from the side? Did it look like that?”

It did.