This was a five-star encounter between two in-form players. You can read my match report on ‘Tennis with an Accent’ website by clicking the link below:
Osaka d. Muguruza: The Mark of A Champion
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Once in a while you come across a match where both players start with solid game plans and push each other in the early going, until the moment where one player takes over the match not because they suddenly begin producing first-rate shots, or not because the other player stumbles onto a bad patch of errors out of nowhere, but rather because intangibles slowly but surely begin to impose in favor of one over the other. Such was the case on Court 13 on Thursday, in 25th-seeded Karolina Muchova’s 6-4 6-1 take down of Mona Barthel in one hour and 13 minutes under windy conditions.
You will not find stats on categories like craftiness, versatility, confidence, perseverance, and athleticism. And yet, they were the central reasons why Muchova, having once grabbed the decisive lead in the first set, was able to sprint to victory without looking over her shoulder.
In fact, if one strictly looked at stroke production, Barthel was able to match Muchova’s skills for most of the first set. She began with clever tactics, going for her second serves in order to halt Muchova’s intention to attack on returns, taking cuts on returns herself to put Muchova on her backfoot early in the point, and using her down-the-line accelerations in rallies from both wings to keep Muchova from stepping inside the baseline, looking to cut off the cross-court strikes to rush the net (one of Muchova’s favorite patterns).
And then, there were the intangibles…
Example 1:
At 30-30 in the 1-1 game on her serve, Barthel served two second-serve aces to hold, thus challenging her opponent to reconsider her plan to park inside the baseline and unleash on second-serve returns. But this is where confidence and belief come into play (one of the above-mentioned intangibles) and Muchova was not intimidated one bit. She kept on pressing on returns, giving a message to Barthel that the German better keep taking risks on her second serves and consistently produce, or else. “Or else” happened and Barthel, feeling the pressure herself, committed double faults at the most inopportune times throughout the match.
Example 2:
At 2-2, 0-15 on Barthel’s serve, Muchova sneak-attacked the net on a sharp cross-court backhand and finished the point with an overhead on Barthel’s floater (intangibles: high on-court IQ, versatility, athleticism). She followed that up with a terrific return winner on the German’s first serve, proving again that she was not backing down on her return positioning (intangible: persistence).
Example 3:
At 3-3, Barthel trailed 0-30, but Muchova made two unforced forehand errors in the following points to allow Barthel back into the game. Did that hold her back? Nope. She accelerated her forehand again at 30-40, landing it on the baseline this time, and Barthel could not get it back into the court (intangibles: high on-court IQ, perseverance).
Barthel essentially found herself trailing 3-4 and down a break, without having played a bad match at all up to that point, and having committed less unforced errors than her opponent. That break proved conclusive, Muchova won the first set 6-4 on her fourth set point when Barthel missed a return deep.
Barthel tried to dial up on aggressive play in the second set, but Muchova managed to derail her plans when she began herself attacking the net relentlessly whenever Barthel stretched for the ball at the baseline. The Czech even mixed in a few serve-and-volley attempts with success. She finished the match with 15 point won at the net out of 21, several of them on overheads because she set the approach up so well that Barthel had no choice but to hit a lob just to allow herself time to recover back to the middle of the court. Executing her all-court game to perfection throughout the second set, Muchova put forth some first-rate tennis, forcing Barthel into more errors in the process.
Consider for example the 30-15 point on Muchova’s serve at 0-1 in the second set. In that point, Muchova nailed an inside out forehand and Barthel, expecting Muchova once again to rush the net behind it, went for a high-risk, low-probability down-the-line passing shot (or what she thought to be a passing shot) on her backhand, and missed it wide. But in reality, Muchova had not followed her forehand to the net. Barthel could have just hit a defensive shot back to the middle of the court and relaunch the rally. Except that Muchova had attacked so many times from that position prior to that point that Barthel, expecting Muchova to once again bring the heat, felt the necessity to come up with a winner to the line, and made the error as a result. This is one of the long-term benefits of the all-court game (read: versatility and craftiness) when it’s well executed. You collect points on the turmoil your game causes inside your opponent’s head (read: intangible).
I will give one last illustration of an intangible, in the form of clutch timing. Post-match stats indicate that Muchova hit one ace in the second set. They will not indicate, however, that it came at break point down when leading 4-1, conclusively shutting the curtains on the last ray of hope Barthel had in order to climb back into the match.
Muchova’s third-round opponent is her compatriot Karolina Pliskova, seeded 6th, in what promises to be a tasty encounter for tennis fans. They met at the Majors twice, both in 2019, with Pliskova winning in straight sets at the Australian Open, and Muchova prevailing in a thrilling three-setter at Wimbledon (13-11 in the final set). I am certainly looking forward to Saturday for the third go-round between these two.
To read my detailed match report on Tennis with an Accent, click here
Swiatek d. Kenin — Poland Garros ends with Iga’s fabulous flourish
Petra Kvitova (7) def. Jasmine Paolini 6-3 6-3
Convince me that there is a better first-striker than Petra Kvitova in women’s tennis. I dare you! I promise to keep an open mind, but you better have plenty of substance to support your pick. I don’t envy you. It will be difficult to find a player that can be held to the high standards of excellence put on display by the Czech champion in this category. She relentlessly stifles her opponents with explosive shots as soon as the first ball is in play, whether a serve or a return. Consider them lucky if they make it to the third shot, ecstatic beyond that.
Jasmine Paolini, her opponent of Thursday, would probably tell you all about it, assuming she has recovered.
As early as in the second game of the match, it was apparent that Paolini was feeling overwhelmed by the speed and power generated by Kvitova’s shots (it’s the first encounter). Paolini lost her serve on a double fault in that game to trail 0-2. That double fault went down in the stats as one of her five total for the match and too bad a foot note cannot be added to it. It would explain that it was the eighth point of that game, coming on the heels of seven crushing returns by Kvitova, two of them for clean winners. It would explain the urgency Paolini felt for a “great” (read: risky) second serve and the subsequent double-fault as the consequence. Later, Kvitova earned a second break for a 5-1 lead when Paolini double-faulted again under similar circumstances.
It was a vintage Petra performance, as she produced 15 clean winners for the set and won who knows how many other points that counted as Paolini’s “forced errors” only because her racket ‘touched’ the ball in full stretch.
The nightmare continued for Paolini in the second set. Exacerbating her problem was the fact that her usual strength lies in controlling the rallies with her ground strokes, especially her forehand. She can drill a mean inside-out winner on that wing at times and she generally prefers to stand close to the baseline, not minding taking balls on the rise if needed, which makes her game adaptable to both clay and hard courts. It’s true that her best results have come on clay but she has enjoyed some success on hard courts too.
Unfortunately for Paolini, that all seemed irrelevant in this match. Kvitova never allowed her to settle into her comfort zone, forcing her to a scramble for balls from the start of almost every point in the match.
Kivota’s next opponent is the young, talented left-handed Canadian player Leylah Fernandez. I presume that Fernandez is aware of the monumental task that awaits her. Is she ready for it? Can anyone really be ready for their first match against Kvitova? Don’t answer, rhetorical question.
Sofia Kenin (4) def. Ana Bogdan 3-6 6-3 6-2
Here is one that should go down as Exhibit One on the topic of “problem-solving during a tennis match.” The Australian Open title holder Sofia Kenin overcame a dreadful start to oust Ana Bogdan of Romania in three sets.
Bogdan’s game relies on footwork and consistency first and foremost, but she can also generate pace from the baseline if needed. Her game was clicking on all cylinders in the first set, as she kept Kenin on the move and behind the baseline with a steady flow of deep shots (usually, Kenin is the one taking her opponents on scenic routs). She committed only four unforced errors** and, more importantly, took away Kenin’s ability to dictate the points. Kenin found herself in the unfamiliar position of retrieving balls rather than being the one to direct traffic and maybe that was the reason behind some of her 16 unforced errors in the set. In any case, her baseline play was erratic, to say the least.
** As always, I do my own count on unforced errors for reasons explained before. The official number may slightly vary.
It was not until around the third game of the second set (Kenin with 19 unforced errors at that juncture, Bogdan with 5) that the tide began to turn little by little. I know many observers will mention, with good reason, the numerous drop-shot winners that Kenin produced, but apart from that, she also started to push Bogdan further outside the court during rallies. She began using sharp cross-courts followed by flat accelerations to the open court. She also returned with more authority from the early moments of the second set forward.
Kenin grabbed a 3-1 lead but Bogdan, a terrific (and underrated) competitor, won eight points in a row, including three winners, to get back to 3-3. The difference was, as opposed to the first set, Bogdan now needed to be the one to push the envelope to win points because Kenin had already steadied the ship. She was making less errors and already throwing Bogdan out of balance in some rallies. By the time the score showed 4-3 in Kenin’s favor, the numbers were confirming the shift. The two were tied at 7 each in the unforced-error count for the second set, in comparison to the lop-sided 16-4 count in the first in Bogdan’s favor.
The 30-30 point in that eighth game was an apt representation of Kenin’s tactics in turning the match around. She made Bogdan chase after her aggressive shots behind the baseline (read: Kenin in full control) before she sneaked in a drop shot. Bogdan had to sprint forward from behind the baseline and barely got to the ball. She flipped it over the net, but it was an ineffective shot, and Kenin won the point with a passing shot. In the next point, Bogdan hit a fairly routine backhand wide to lose her serve. That error could have been the result of not having recovered from the previous point, or not feeling as confident as earlier in the match, or feeling the need to hit closer to the lines so that Kenin did not get to settle do the same to her. In any case, Kenin now led 5-3 and served for the set. She made all five of her first serves, finishing the set with a big one landing close to the “T.” Bogdan lunged and got her racket on it, but the ball never made it back into the court.
Primed and ready to take control of the match from the onset of the final set, Kenin executed beautifully in the first three games. She hit four drop-shot winners made zero unforced errors to go up 3-0. It’s not that Bogdan was falling apart — she was not, she made only one unforced error herself in that same span –, it’s just that she was rendered helpless by the pinpoint accuracy of her opponent’s shot placement. The bigger problem for Bogdan was that she had to now shift tactics and come up with solutions, and she simply lacked the necessary variety in her arsenal to try anything significantly distinct from her established Plan A. Perhaps, that is why she has not yet been able to reach the final of a Tour event or record a win against a top-10 opponent.
Kenin catapulted to a 5-1 lead a bit later and overcame a brief glitch in the last two games (7 of her 8 unforced errors in this set came here), before crossing the finish line on her 14th winner of the set. She will next take on the qualifier Irina Bara for a spot in the round of 16.
Paula Badosa def. Sloane Stephens (29) 6-4 4-6 6-2
Paula Badosa achieved a first in her tennis career, reaching the third round of a Major, at the same location where she won the junior girls’ titles in 2015 (photo below is from her semifinal win over Marketa Vondrousova that year). If you have followed Badosa’s career, her reaching the third round of a Major should not come as a surprise frankly, although it is her first time doing so. She has made considerable improvements to her game over the last two years (currently ranked 87, only one spot below her career best achieved in 2019) and had it not been for her pre-2018 struggles with injury, anxiety, and depression, she would have probably made it to this stage sooner. It’s nevertheless impressive to see how much better she is with her movement, ball placement (especially her backhand down-the-line), and decision-making. Note: It will be interesting to see how her tennis progresses forward from here forward considering that, after her semifinal appearance in Istanbul three weeks ago, she ended her two-year-long partnership with Xavi Budo, the coach she credits for the upturn in her career. Well, so far, no problem!
I would not be telling the full story of this match if did not mention that her opponent Stephens contributed just as much to this particular result as the progress in Badosa’s game. The Spaniard won eight out of nine points to start the match raced to a 2-0 lead, thanks to three winners of her own and three unforced errors by Stephens. The American held serve in the next game and caught up with Badosa at 4-4, but it was not because her game had recovered from the mediocre start. Errors were still coming in force (15 in the first set) and after a contested game that ended in Badosa’s favor for a 5-4 lead, the Spaniard won 12 of the next 15 points in less than 10 minutes to go up 6-4 2-0. The strange part was that Sloane was not even going for the lines. A significant portion of her errors came on shots aimed to the middle of the court, either sailing deep or slamming into the net. A number of them were actually short sitters! I kept wondering if she was ever going to try for more angles, or a change of pace, or maybe a drop shot or two, or something!
I finally noticed one such point with Badosa leading at 2-0 in the second set, when Stephens angled a forehand to push Badosa outside the court and hit the winner on the next shot to the wide-open ad side to grab the 30-15 lead. Two points later she held serve.
A second such point came in the next game, at 15-0 on Badosa’s serve at 2-1, when Stephens mixed in a slice backhand, followed by deep drive, and smacked her backhand down-the-line for a winner. Badosa still won that game to lead 3-1 when she hit a backhand down-the-line winner of her own (an example of one of the improvements I noted above), but Stephens was finally sinking her teeth in the match.
More importantly, Badosa was now having to worry about protecting her break lead until the end of the match, rather than just cruising along while Sloane’s errors piled up. That increased pressure on Badosa may well have been one of the reasons behind her first double fault of the match at 4-3, 30-30. Then, Stephens won the next point on a forehand winner and yelled out “Come on” for the first time in the match. It was maybe the most refreshing sound since it began, and that is coming from a neutral observer.
Now at 4-4 and Stephens serving, Badosa had a break point at 30-40 to reclaim the lead and serve out the match. Stephens drilled a forehand inside-out winner and yelled “Come on” again (with a fist pump this time) to deny her opponent the break. At deuce, another forehand winner gave her the ad, and she won the game with a powerful serve, taking a 5-4 lead.
When Badosa missed her backhand deep on set point one game later, Stephens let out her loudest and longest “Come On,” and for good reasons! She just won four games in a row to level a match in which she was behind most of the time. I thought at that moment that this match would end in a similar outcome as the previous one, with the player who has a Major title in her resumé (plus a Roland Garros final appearance in Sloane’s case) scoring a comeback victory. Not this time.
Badosa did not crumble despite squandering the set and 4-2 lead, and had a terrific start to the final set. After breaking Sloane’s serve in a close first game, she served her only two aces in the next one and added a winner to go up 2-0.
Apparently, that is all it took for the wheels to fall off for Stephens. She lost the next 8 points, six on routine mistakes, to find herself down 0-4. It is not that matches cannot have momentum swings, but this was a lightning-fast, baffling 180-degree turnaround of four games that sunk the same player who had just executed a dazzling 180-degree turnaround of four games of her own to get back into the match!
Badosa, stayed the course, completed the formalities, and closed the curtains down on Stephens by winning the last four points of the match at 5-2. She made only 13 unforced errors in the match (less than Stephens’s total in the first set alone), and only one in the final set. She was clearly the better player, thoroughly deserving of victory, and in retrospect, it’s astonishing that this match even extended to a third set. Take away the four-game stretch late in the second set, this was as lop-sided as a match can get in favor of one player. It proves, yet again, how unpredictable tennis is and how deceptive it can be to watch only certain parts of match.
Next for Badosa is another previous Major title winner, the 2017 Roland Garros champion Jelena Ostapenko.
As a guest on a few podcasts following the US Open, I argued that the semifinal match between Naomi Osaka and Jennifer Brady in New York was the most spectacular match of the tournament on the women’s side. The encounter featured rallies of extreme high pace, and whereas one may expect a notable dose of wild errors to accompany the potent shot-making in such cases, both women kept their game clean and increased their scintillating shot production instead as the match progresses. I was left wondering how in the world they did not mishit more balls at that velocity.
Tuesday morning at Roland Garros two weeks later, Brady was part of another high-quality match similar in posture to the one in New York, except that her opponent was not a proven performer at the elite WTA level with Major titles in her resumé like Osaka, but was rather the former world junior number one Clara Tauson, the 17-year-old Danish player, who stepped on Court Simonne-Mathieu for her first match in the main draw of a Major. She had only one main draw WTA Tour match in her record prior to entering the qualifying rounds at Roland Garros, a first-round loss at the Lugano event last year, after coming through qualifying. Let those last few lines sink in first. Then, consider what took place during the two hours and 45 minutes of this delightful outing, eventually ending 6-4 3-6 9-7 in favor of the youngster. Tauson not only matched Brady’s shot-making prowess at every juncture of the match, but also put on display the type of mental resiliency that usually defines top-notch performers on the WTA Tour.
Tauson survived two match points and persevered through the disappointment of not capitalizing on three of her own, before coming out on top on her fifth two games later, all taking place in the extended stages of the third set against a seasoned and in-form opponent whose level remained high throughout. It is not that Brady did something wrong and deserved to lose. It is rather Tauson who plucked away to victory by doing (almost) everything right.
To hardly anyone’s surprise, especially to those familiar with Tauson’s game, both players began the match on fifth gear, nailing the ball in an effort to dominate rallies, leading to the first five points ending in direct winners.
At the end of three games, there were already a total of 13 winners on record, nine of them coming from Tauson’s racket. May I remind you that we heard repeatedly since the competition began, that the courts playing slower due to weather conditions and the newly adopted – and bigger – Wilson balls. Feel free to toss that observation in the back of the closet for this match.
Tauson broke Brady’s serve to grab an early 3-1 lead and you could tell Brady was already forced to put her high-IQ into overdrive to come up with answers to the overwhelming flow of powerful shots raining her way from the other side of the court. Tauson was generating most of her winners from either the middle of the court on her forehand (eight such winners, four to each corner) or from the ad corner with her backhand down-the-line (five of them in the set). So, Brady began testing the one unproven side in the match thus far and began pulling Tauson wide to her forehand side to see, I presume, if the youngster could effectively produce winners from that location on the court.
She first tried it for the first time at 0-15 on Tauson’s serve in that 3-1 game and it led to an error by the Danish player. Brady finished the game with a winner (one of her ten total) to get back on serve and doubled down on that particular pattern, taking away the two spots on the court from where Tauson was producing the most winners (see above).
At 2-3, 15-0 serving, Brady pushed Tauson again to the forehand corner, earning a short reply which she put away to the open court with her backhand. She followed that up with a strong wide serve to the deuce side, producing a similar result and leveled the set at 3-3 one point later. In the ensuing game at 30-30, Brady looked like she was on track to gain the lead when she once again stretched Tauson to her forehand corner and followed it up with a winner when Tauson’s reply fell short. She could not, however, take advantage of it when she returned the ball into the net on the following break point.
The problem for Brady, you see, was that Tauson is not some one-dimensional player who possesses only a single bag of tricks (read: strike every ball hard and aim for winners). She can hit angles as well from both wings and mix-in the occasional drop shot. On her serve, she has the ability to vary the amount of kick or slice. And lo and behold, she is not afraid to come to the net and use her fundamentally sound volleys (5 out of 8 on approaches to the net in the set). Brady forced Tauson to dig deep into her set of skills. Tauson responded by holding serve after a contested game that saw four deuces, thus halting the American’s progress.
Each player held serve one more time and the scoreboard showed Brady serving at 4-5. This is where Tauson rose to the occasion with the composure of a champion. She started the game with a booming return that Brady could not get back. Two points later, she struck her fourth backhand down-the-line winner to get the 15-30 lead. At 30-30, she came up with a drop-shot winner to earn a set point, where she finally received an assist from Brady who had been playing a clean game with only four unforced errors (my own count) until that moment. The American missed a backhand in the net on Tauson’s return.
Brady, too great a competitor to get discouraged, buckled down on her problem-solving dexterity and adopted an ultra-aggressive game plan to take away Tauson’s ability to direct traffic during rallies. She began pounding on returns at the cost of making mistakes (did not make many) in order to take charge from the get-go and not allow Tauson to continue generating power from comfortable spots.
Brady led 2-1 when Tauson called for a medical time-out due to an ailing thigh. When she emerged from the medical time-out with her upper left thigh bandaged, she was ready to go back to work, but the flow of high-octane shots by Brady coming her way eventually began to take their toll. Brady insisted on exploiting the wide forehand corner on Tauson’s side and took more risks on her second serves with successful results (see for example the last two second serves to the ad side in the 2-1 game, with Tauson having to strain to get them back whereas she was taking charge on second-serve returns in the first set).
Tauson began to show cracks in her game – totally acceptable, bound to happen at some point considering the circumstances from her perspective – toward the end of the set when she served at 3-5. She missed a makeable volley and hit a forehand sitter in the net, losing the set 6-3 on her tenth unforced error of the set.
Fast-forward to Tauson serving at 5-6 in the final set, when it looked like the exciting adventure was about to come to an end for her. She missed two forehand sitters in the net in the first four points to find herself down two match points at 15-40. Somehow, Tauson remained resolved and squeezed a return error out of Brady with her first serve to save one match point. Then, she got back to deuce after a terrific rally in which she fearlessly unleashed four huge shots (and another forehand down-the-line topspin that caught the back of the line), virtually beating an error out of Brady. For good measure, she hit a stellar forehand inside-out winner to equalize at 6-6.
It was all Tauson over the next five minutes or so, as she broke serve and earned her first match point at 7-6 serving, 40-15. She finally showed some signs of nerves, I presume, missing a forehand and a backhand deep in succession, allowing Brady to get back to deuce. She had another chance to put the match to rest two points later, but her drop-shot attempt ended in the net. On Brady’s second break-point chance, Tauson missed a short backhand when Brady’s floater skipped on the service line and bounced low. Just like that it was 7-7.
You would think that the 17-year-old would finally succumb to the magnitude of the moment and crumble away after squandering three chances to win the match, right? Wrong! Not Tauson.
She remained level-headed in a way that would make top players envious after the disappointment of the previous game and it was Brady who cracked with two unforced errors in a row at deuce, both landing deep, and giving Tauson a chance to serve for the match again at 8-7. Tauson did not let this game slip away. She saved a break point at 30-40 with her 48th winner of the match (yes, forty-eight!) and although another match point went by when Brady hit an amazing backhand cross-court winner, Tauson capitalized on her fifth one when she landed a first serve close to the “T” and Brady missed the forehand return wide.
Side notes:
— 48 winners to 38 for Tauson (official count says 46 unforced errors for Tauson) and 39 to 19 for Brady (official count says 25 for her unforced errors). Maybe not at the sky-high levels of the Osaka-Brady US Open semifinal that I mentioned in the beginning, but undoubtedly a quality match by any measure.
— I simply cannot rely on the official unforced-error count. Numbers have been significantly higher than in my counts in all four first-round matches I analyzed so far in this tournament. I’ve closely observed how the official count works. One example: a shot missed by a server following a hard return by the opponent ,landing inches away from the baseline, thus forcing the server to balance on their backfoot to hit a half-volley-like shot, is simply not an unforced error in my book. Another example: a return missed on a high-kicking second serve, one that forces the returner to strike above the shoulder level on a reach is not an unforced error.
— I cannot help but wonder why neither player gave a fair shot to the idea of using slice to see if they could collect errors from their opponent. Especially interesting that Brady stayed away from it so much (she has the shot in her arsenal), never forcing Tauson to hit a couple or three shots from the knee level or below.
— Tauson’s net stats are 14 out of 27, which makes me wonder if they take into account points where Tauson hit a potent shot, and seeing that Brady is on the run and is likely to float the next shot back, began moving to the net, but winning the point without having to volley because Brady’s retrieval never made it back on her side. I am fairly certain that Tauson’s attacking game had a better success rate than 52%.
Tauson takes on an another American next, the 57th-ranked Danielle Collins.
Aliaksandra Sasnovich has been a steady performer on the WTA Tour, and on all surfaces, over the last three years. Two of her best results in her career came in 2018, first when she made the finals of the WTA Tour event in Brisbane, losing to Elina Svitolina, second when she stunned Petra Kvitova, one of the title favorites, in the opening round at Wimbledon and won two more matches to reach the fourth round, her best result in a Major. Sasnovich earned a career-high ranking of no.30 in that same year.
Though she eventually dropped below the top 100 in early 2020, she has had solid results since the tour resumed in August with Palermo Ladies Open, where she won six matches in a row as a qualifier to get to the quarterfinals before losing to top-seeded Petra Martic in two tiebreakers. Following a third-round loss to Yulia Putintseva at the US Open and another quarterfinal showing in Istanbul, Sasnovich arrived at Roland Garros ranked at no.96 in the WTA.
Her first-round opponent Anna-Lena Friedsam of Germany, ranked no.104, suffered several early-round losses this year, except in Marseille in March where she played her second career WTA final, losing to Sofia Kenin in three sets. It was back in 2016 that Friedsam reached her career-best ranking of 45, before injuries (particularly her shoulder) sidelined her for extended periods of times. After dropping as low as outside the top 300 in 2018, her career finally took an upturn recently. She finds herself on the verge of entering top 100 again.
Sasnovich and Friedsam, both born in 1994 and only 7 weeks apart, had already faced each other at the start of the 2020 season in Shenzen where the Belarusian defeated Friedsam 6-2 6-3.
Being the second match scheduled on Court 13 – click here to read my analysis of the first match between Benjamin Bonzi and Emil Ruusuvuori –, the two women were spared the steady drizzle that Bonzi and Ruusuvuori had been subjected to during the first two sets of their match. Nonetheless, conditions still remained piss-poor with cold temperatures and winds causing havoc in terms of shot-production by both players.
There is always the case of one player adjusting a bit quicker to weather conditions than the other, which could be due to one player’s fundamentals being more adaptable to different conditions than that of the other player, or to that player’s ability to remain more cool-headed than the other under adverse conditions. In any case, that player in this match was Sasnovich who actually lost her serve to start the match by committing three unforced errors in the first game while slipping and sliding on the court (she smacked the bottom of her shoe in frustration with the racket to get the clay off on the fourth point of the match). She did adjust quickly though, and made only two unforced errors for the rest of the set!
She also began to use her drops shots frequently, probably realizing that testing Friedsam’s first-step quickness forward may be something she could exploit further. Despite a bad drop shot that cost her the 3-1 game on her serve, that tactic worked in her favor for the duration of the set, throwing Friedsam out of balance during rallies and not allowing the German to settle into a rhythm. Friedsam made 10 unforced errors from 1-0 up to 2-6 down and by the time she decided to increase the velocity on her shots in an attempt to regain some control in rallies, it was too late.
Friedsam, determined not to find herself in the same situation as in the first set, made an emphatic statement to her opponent in the first game of the second set, producing two forehand winners and two high-octane returns that forced Sasnovich into errors. It could have been costly had she missed them, but ti was the right choice at that moment. The alternative was to play cautious and avoid errors, only to allow Sasnovich to hold the reins during rallies thanks to her variety, including drop shots (read: a rehash of the first set).
Friedsam held serve to go up 2-0 and continued to pound away, especially with her forehand. While Sasnovich remained within distance when she held serve at 1-3, you could tell that she was beginning to fear her opponents’ accelerations. She was straining to place her shots deeper in order to avoid Friedsam’s winner attempts that were now landing in for the most part — because that is what happens when you commit to a plan and believe in it; you embrace the risk itself instead of fearing its consequences. As Sasnovich’s targets became more and more limited in her increased attempts to keep Friedsam behind the baseline and off balance, she began to commit errors of her own and got broken a second time. Sasnovich’s unforced-error count more than doubled in the second set (11) while Friedsam, despite playing riskier tennis, cut hers down to 5 for the set.
When the third set began, it was Sasnovich’s turn to solve problems and make the pendulum swing back her way. She achieved that goal in the first game already by shifting to higher gear on the pace of her baseline shots and stripping away Friedsam’s ability to take the initiative. In doing so, she made three forehand unforced errors in that first game, but she managed to hold serve by forcing Friedsam into errors of her own. The difference between what she did right there at the beginning of the third set, and what Friedsam had done earlier at the beginning of the second (they both successfully managed to shift the momentum) was that Friedsam aimed for direct winners or sought to squeeze rapid, forced errors out of Sasnovich, whereas Sasnovich, instead of looking to end the point quickly one way or the other, added spin (or slice) as well as pace, but hitting closer to the lines, with the ultimate goal being, I presume, to keep Friedsam on the move and make herself be the one to set the patterns in rallies again.
It worked.
As Friedsam found herself in more and more difficult positions, she could not generate the same pace and reproduce the precision she enjoyed in the second set, and errors began creeping into her game. Once Sasnovich went up a break 2-0, the match had a new outlook. It was now the Belarusian directing traffic again during rallies, using the full range of varieties in her arsenal, from topspin to drive accelerations, to slices on both wings (including that rare and wicked inside-out slice that she can hit on her forehand), mixed in with drops shots for good measure. As an example, I would recommend a rewatch of the 2-1 game if you have access, the breaking point of the final set in my view. It starts and ends with two drop-shot winners by Sasnovich, and then, there is the crucial 30-30 point in the middle, where Friedsam responds to the challenge put forth by Sasnovich by coming into the net on a great approach shot (exactly what she should do at that juncture of the match and on that point) that puts Sasnovich on a full run to her backhand side. Yet, the Belarusian, thanks to her agility, hits a tremendous two-handed down-the-line passing shot on the full run, earning the break point, and probably delivering a devastating blow to Friedsam’s charge to sink her teeth into the final set — the German had just broken serve to get back to 1-2 and was serving to equalize at 2-2.
With her timing derailed and down by a break again after the above sequence, Friedsam’s unforced-error count once again skyrocketed. She tried to counteract the effects by coming to the net more often, and had only limited success with it because Sasnovich simply did not provide the German with enough chances to consistently come forward.
Friedsam finished the final set with 11 unforced errors, whereas Sasnovich made only four more after the initial three in the first game, before she concluded the match with 6-2 2-6 6-3 win. It was not a spectacular performance by any means, but it was extremely efficient considering the dreadful circumstances created by not only the lack of spectators (Ct. 13 looked deserted for most of the match), but also the miserable weather conditions. In short, it was an extremely professional day at the office for Aliaksandra Sasnovich.
Her second-round opponent is Caroline Garcia who took out the 17th-seeded Anett Kontaveit in three sets and I feel certain that Sasnovich will have plenty of additional problem-solving to do against the Frenchwoman.