17-year-old Amanda Anisimova of USA upset the defending Simona Halep in two sets earlier on Thursday. You can find my post-match analysis of this match my contributing article to Tennis with an Accent. Click on the title below.
Anisimova uses a reliable formula to end Halep’s repeat bid in Paris
I am sure many French tennis fans left Philippe Chatrier stadium disappointed following the come-back win (1-6 6-4 6-4) by Anna Blinkova over Caroline Garcia because they felt that Caro had the match in her grasp only to let it slip away. We tend to exaggerate – and this is not necessarily a criticism – the importance of the last few games, or even the last few points of a match, and reach an overall conclusion based on that limited scope.
On the one hand, it is undeniable that Garcia squandered the lead in the third set, yes. Twice! It is also undeniable that Blinkova deserves some appreciation for her resolve in turning a hopeless situation into a balanced one by the end of the second set.
For fans of Anna, or those who have been following her rise over the last few years closely, the fact that she maintains a positive body language on the court, exuding confidence, and truly “looking the part” in doing so, will not come across as a news flash. I would venture to say that as a 20-year-old, she is as ironclad as tennis competitors come in the mental department. She is constantly tuned-in for the next point. “Now” seems to be the key word for her. That is the case whether the scoreboard shows her leading a set and 4-0, down a set and 0-4, or in the second game of the match.
…or, when she gets completely crushed in the first set (1-6) and begins the second set with a double fault… which was where she found herself on Thursday afternoon against Garcia.
How bad did she get dominated? Garcia blitzed to 3-0 lead, serving 9 out of 10 first serves in, hitting five winners. Blinkova barely got a glimmer of hope when she had a break point at 1-3 down. But Garcia shut that door on that quickly and resumed the one-sided affair until the end of the set. She finished with a flurry, hitting 20 out of her 26 first serves in (77%) which not only gave her free points on return errors but also kept setting her up for the next shot (again, 1-2 punch in effect).
Her game was sparkling clean, making a total of only four unforced errors in the first set, which is a stellar stat considering how much risk she takes on her returns and groundies.
For those who may not have noticed (although it is quite hard not to), Garcia indeed takes the ball extremely early on returns, and often does so continuously throughout the match. She has been doing this for a long time – for example, see my match report from 2014 on her qualifying match in Cincinnati –, it is one of the trademarks of her game. She has great hands so she can pull it off most of the time. Every now and then, as the saying “you live by the sword you die by the sword” goes, it works against her. The first set was a case of the former. She put so much pressure on Blinkova that the Russian would just whack the ball back herself, in an attempt to thwart further assault by Garcia’s penetrating strikes. Naturally, that led to several ‘forced’ errors on Blinkova’s part.
For an example, out of many, of how effective Garcia can be with those aggressive returns, see the 30-15 point in the first game of the second set. Garcia smacks a lunging forehand return flat and deep back to the baseline which sends Blinkova (who hit a fairly solid first serve half a second ago) stretching desperately to her ad side to get the ball back. She does, but it’s short. Garcia moves in and nails the backhand winner to the corner.
In case you want to observe both examples (in other words, examples of living and dying by the sword), fast forward to the 4-2 game in the third set to see three in a row. With Blinkova leading 40-0, Garcia hits two scorching return winners, one forehand one backhand, on two well-struck first serves by Blinkova to get to 40-30. Then, she goes for a third return-winner attempt on another first serve and misses it deep to lose the game. All three returns are hit from at least a meter inside the baseline (she even waits for them on or inside the baseline).
Let me get back to the match and put things into perspective at this point. Here we are, after a lop-sided first set that went Garcia’s way, and Blinkova just committed a double fault to start the second set. Garcia hops to her left and walks to return the next point, full of positive energy. It’s also worth, at this point, to remember the larger context of the match: Blinkova a young qualifier who entered the WTA top 100 only about eight months ago, had stepped on court Philippe Chatrier for the first time in her career to face a seeded French player.
And now back to the 1-6, 0-15 moment:
– Blinkova serves an ace to the ‘T’!
– It is one of her only two aces in the match, her only one in the second set. But it could not have come at a better come!
– She hops up twice (with energy) and pumps her left fist!
– She turns back with a swagger, says “come on,” and gets a ball from the ballkid on the deuce side.
– Then, she rotates to her right with her head up and gets another ball from the other ballkid.
– She struts right back to serve and hits another first serve (wins that point too, but that is not important for now)
The above sequence lasts around 10 seconds. It should be ten seconds that every coach should require their pupil to watch. Not the double fault, not the ace, but rather Blinkova’s body language between the two. A sequence that includes no actual tennis, but one that has everything to do with competitive tennis.
The coach should also ask the pupil, just for good measure, if the woman who just served looks like someone who served a double fault 30 seconds ago after getting pulverized 1-6 by a seeded opponent at a Major.
That’s Blinkova in a nutshell. What counts is “now,” where it counts is “the court.”
Later in that game at 40-30, Blinkova is able to float back deep another aggressive return by Garcia and manages to engage her in a rare rally. Garcia eventually makes the error (long rallies are not exactly her forté). Blinkova yells and makes a fist and pumps herself up further as she struts with even more confidence to change ends. In retrospect, that first game of the second set looms large as one of the turning points of the match.
Garcia continues to go for her returns, Blinkova continues to scramble and fight, but the match is now more balanced. More importantly, Garcia has finally cooled down a tad. The biggest difference is on her first-serve percentage which drops down to 52% in the second set, down from 77% in the first. Less first serves results in more returns in by Blinkova, which in return means longer rallies. It is on one such point that Blinkova finally breaks through when she wins the 30-40 point at 4-3 and yells loudly “come oooon” with her fist pumped up high!
Although Garcia breaks back, Blinkova is still able to break right back in the ensuing game because Garcia, and this is where she has to shoulder the blame a bit, makes three backhand unforced errors in a row to go down 0-40, and loses on another backhand miss into the net (though this one was on a deep return by Blinkova) at 30-40.
The more important trend is that since early in the second set, the match has been played more on Blinkova’s terms, unlike in the first set.
Third set begins with yet another double fault by Blinkova (total of four for the match). But this time, there is no ace following it, instead a backhand unforced error that puts her down 0-30. When she double-faults again at 30-40, her second in the game, but fourth and last one for the match, Garcia goes up 1-0. It’s once again full speed ahead for the Caro train.
She goes up 3-0 in the blink of an eye, looking as invincible as she did in the first three games of the first set. She even gets a point to go up 4-0 at 40-30.
And it’s from this point forward that those claiming that Garcia squandered her lead have a point. Because on that point to go up 4-0, the Frenchwoman, who has been playing impeccable tennis since the final set began, makes her first unforced error of the set when she floats a backhand deep. Blinkova eventually breaks Garcia’s serve to get back 1-3.
Just like that, momentum changes, one thing leads to another, and Blinkova wins five out of the next six games to pull the upset. To add salt to the wound, Garcia wins only two points after 4-4, making four unforced errors and a double fault (on match point) on the way.
There is no need for a long conclusion paragraph for this one. It’s a career win for Blinkova and a devastating exit for Garcia. But neither those who give all the praises to Blinkova for this comeback, nor those who place all the blame on Garcia are correct. It’s a bit of both. Blinkova showed how wise (and cool-headed) she is beyond her years in the second set, and Garcia crumbled in the third after a fantastic start to grab an early lead. Ultimately, it was a three-set match that had one brilliant set for each, and one set that was at the same time memorable for one, and forgettable for the other.
Blinkova will face the winner of the Madison Keys vs Priscilla Hon match. It will be the Russian’s sixth match in 11 days, assuming it will be played on Saturday. I am fairly certain that will not matter to Blinkova. She will be tuned-in and ready.
23rd-seeded Donna Vekic entered her first-round encounter against Liudmilla Samsonova as a heavy favorite on paper and the scoreboard at the end of the match, 6-2 6-4 in her favor, seemed to accurately reflect that forecast. Nonetheless, it must be noted that her pre-match “favorite” tag was probably based on different reasons than why she actually won so convincingly.
Samsonova, ranked no. 159 in the WTA, was playing in the main draw of a Major for the first time in her life and her most notable accomplishments to date have come on the ITF tour. It only seemed to make sense that Vekic would step on Court 7 on Monday as the clear favorite, even without taking into account possible match-up issues in terms of style and tactical play. Isn’t that how upsets often take place anyway? The more accomplished A player looks to be the favorite on paper, but due to the game-related match-up problems posed by Player B (the so-called “lesser” opponent), things take a strange turn and before you know it, an upset is brewing.
Unfortunately for Samsonova, it was the favorite who posed those match-up problems rather than the underdog in this case.
Both players sought to control rallies with their forehands, but Vekic’s forehand was a tad more accurate and less erratic than Samsonova’s. When both players had opportunities to step inside the baseline and accelerate their forehands for winners, Samsonova struggled with high sitters** while Vekic produced winners anytime she could step in and nail her forehand. To compound that particular problem, Vekic used variety on her ground strokes – loopy topspin floaters, drop shots, angles – while Samsonova struck the ball with pretty much the same velocity throughout the match, hardly ever throwing Vekic off her rhythm.
**As examples of high-forehand errors on sitters by Samsonova, see the 30-30 point at 1-5 in the first set, the 15-30 point in the first game of the second set, the break point at 1-1 that ended the game (photo below), and the first point of the 4-5 game.
Most notably, Vekic had the quicker footwork which, by extension, gave her a distinct advantage in this baseline duel between two players with somewhat similar game plans. Whenever Samsonova hit a terrific, aggressive shot to the corners, Vekic was able to scramble, stretch, and counterpunch (or loop it back from either corner), causing Samsonova to hit harder and harder just to end the point. However, they frequently ended in an unforced error by her, resulting from the frustration of seeing so many balls come back over the net. Samsonova finished the match with 19 unforced errors (by my count – as my regular readers may know by now, I prefer to keep the unforced error count myself) just on her forehands, four more than the total number of unforced errors for Vekic.
In contrast, when Vekic put Samsonova on defense, she was able to force the Russian into an error a lot quicker. Samsonova did not fare nearly as well as Vekic did (the gap between the two with regard to first-step explosion was visible in these points) when they had to cover a large area of the court and run balls down, or react to hard and flat strikes by the opponent**.
**The deuce point in the 2-1 game and the first point of the ensuing 3-1 game in the first set are emblematic examples of this distinction.
Don’t let the lop-sided result – or most of my analysis above – mislead you though. Samsonova may have faced an insurmountable match-up problem on Monday, but she can (and will, sooner than later in my opinion) cause nightmares to top 50 players. The firepower on her ground strokes is noteworthy and she possesses a great combination of first and second serve. Her first serve is quite imposing and her second serve, far from being a liability, can have a nasty kick to the outside on the ad-court. I am tempted to say that Samsonova’s game would be more dangerous on faster surfaces because of her serve and the high-octane potential on her groundies but I cannot be certain yet. She uses big, loopy backswings on both sides (see photos below) so I prefer to see a couple of more matches – from beginning to end – on different surfaces – and in WTA events – before I can comfortably comment on that detail.
Suffice it to say that a few holes in Samsonova’s game may need to be filled, but at 20 years old, time is on her side. In my opinion, she should be considered a player to watch in early rounds of WTA events. As for Vekic, she will look to carry her consistency and footwork into her second-round encounter vs. Rebecca Peterson of Sweden.
Under normal circumstances, any tennis fan would justifiably get excited to watch an encounter between Petra Martic (no.32) and Marketa Vondrousova (no.73), two of the more talented players in the WTA. Both women are fine shot-makers, largely thanks to the large variety of hits they can produce from any position on the court. This particular second-round match between the two at the Australian Open, however, did not meet the expectations despite the close scoreline.
There were a number of eye-opening winners hit by each player – that much was expected in any case – and neither was shy about digging deep into her bag of tricks. Yet, the 6-4 7-5 victory in favor of the Croatian player Martic was also marked by her piecemeal performance that turned out to be just sufficient, largely because of the progressively erratic play by her opponent throughout the match.
In an oddball first set, neither player held serve until 4-3 for Martic. It is not that this never happened before, although it’s quite rare. What made this particular start atypical was that neither player served badly or returned particularly well up to that point, which are the main reasons why such oddity occurs. Marketa served put 64% of her first serves in while Petra did the same at 72% up to that juncture in the match. Although it should be noted that Vondrousova was returning aggressively at times, one can hardly point to spectacular returning as the reason for which neither player could buy a service hold if their lives depended on it. They did not even get close to holding! By the time that eight game began, the total number of game-point opportunities that both players had on their serves was… wait for it… zero!
It was as if each got touched by some magic wand every time the serve changed hands. The server would all of a sudden sail balls out and wide, or slam them into the net, while the returner would suddenly turn solid as a rock, adding a winner or two in the mix for good measure.
A magic wand of a different kind arrived, I presume, after that game, one that brought some degree of normalcy back to court number 8 at Melbourne Park. Martic held serve the next two times to grab the first set 6-4. Through both periods of the set, the “atypical” portion and the “normal” one, Martic made seven unforced errors, a tad better than Vondrousova who committed 12 of them. Simply put, the player that ‘donated’ less won the first set.
[Reminder: I do my own count for unforced errors, so my numbers may differ slightly than the official ones. For example, I don’t include double faults in this category, to cite one possible difference among others.]
Vondrousova began the second set with a clear willingness to get more aggressive from the baseline. She also appeared to be determined to approach the net if any short-ball opportunity presented itself. It worked. She won all but one of the point in which she approached the net in the first four games of that set.
There was one moment where Vondrousova could have truly taken over the reins. She was up 2-1 and had a break-point opportunity with Martic serving at 30-40. She had the chance to grab a two-game lead for the first time in the match and truly swing the pendulum of momentum her way, at least in this set. Martic was showing signs of frustration, accompanied by racket-throwing or self-monologuing outbursts, certainly due the pressure she felt from her opponent’s increasingly aggressive tactics.
Vondrousova got the return in play and a rally ensued. She committed a dreadful unforced error on her forehand that briskly ended the rally and brought the score to deuce. That forehand shot landed to the bottom of the net, literally, and rolled to the other side of the court through that little opening at the bottom of the net caused by the net strap being hooked to the ground. Following the error, Vondrousova bent and grabbed her right knee, rolled her hand over it (more on this later).
Martic served an ace at deuce. Vondrousova followed that up by dipping a routine forehand return into the net again on Martic’s second serve. Just like that, her one chance at taking charge vanished, the only one that she had in the match.
Both players sprayed even more unforced errors in the second set than they did in the first. Most of Marketa’s 18 errors (Petra had 11) came in the last several games of the second set after her momentum was halted.
Martic eventually grabbed a 5-3 lead but could not put Vondrousova away due to a few errors of her own. But it almost felt like a delay of the inevitable. At 5-5, Martic won the next eight out of nine points, the last three on unforced errors by Voundrousova, and ended the match after one hour and 32 minutes.
In the upcoming days, Vondrousova must confront a bigger concern than the loss of a tennis match. She clearly has a right-leg problem that has not gone away. It already hindered her progress once in the spring of 2018 when she had to retire in the second round in Stuttgart, leading 3-2 in the third vs. Svitolina. Then it reappeared in September, forcing her to stay away from competition until this week in Melbourne. On Monday, after her straight-set win over Evgeniya Rodina in the first round, Marketa did admit to suffering from pain on that same leg, explaining that it has now shifted to her knee. She admitted that she will need to “deal with it” after the Australian Open in one way or another.
As for Martic, she will need to perform at a significantly higher level than she did on Wednesday, when she takes on fifth-seeded American Sloane Stephens in the third round on Friday. Petra possesses the tools to dismantle anyone’s game on a given day, but Stephens can neutralize the strenghts of an opponent better than most WTA players can, thanks to her on-court sense and counter-punching skills. If they both play at a high level, expect the quality of tennis to skyrocket in that match.
————— Random final thought:
I found it puzzling that Martic seemed fine with engaging in so many cross-court rallies from her forehand (arguably her less versatile side) to Vondrousova’s backhand. I did not count the win-loss numbers on them (I should have, in retrospect) but I have a feeling that a large percentage ended in Vondrousova’s favor, which is not surprising. She seemed perfectly content with sending the ball right back cross-court to Martic’s forehand and waiting for her opportunity to pull the trigger. That’s no surprise, considering that she has the ability to accelerate better – or nail the occasional, flat, warp-speed winner – with her backhand. She is a bit more prone to errors on her forehand, thus more apprehensive on that side.
Although I eventually decided against it, I was tempted to add “time and again” to the end of the title, to avoid any misunderstanding. So, I will clarify. It is not by winning the WTA Luxembourg Open that Julia Goerges “met the bar” this week. There is a lot more nuance to her run to the title than simply accomplishing what was expected on paper from the top-seeded player in the field. What must be emphasized here is the consistent way in which the ninth-ranked German “met the bar” every time she was challenged by her opponents and the stakes got higher.
Any coach/supporter will tell you that, while watching your player roll through matches with great overall performances may feel ecstatic, seeing him/her overcome challenging situations, making the right decisions under duress, and turning into a mental giant each time the score points to a critical stage, corresponds to a unique type of jubilation that satisfies at a far deeper level than one generated by watching him/her dominate an opponent during a routine win.
Let’s take a look at the key moments of the last three matches played this week by Goerges, her quarterfinal win over Donna Vekic, her comeback semifinal one over Eugénie Bouchard, and her victory over Belinda Bencic in the final.
Vekic took Goerges to a third set in the quarterfinals and pushed her hard in the final set. Down 2-3 and serving, Vekic saved three break points to hold and get back to 3-3. At the time, it felt like a significant momentum change in a match where each previous set had been decided by a single major momentum shift. When Goerges started that seventh game with a double fault, it felt like the beginning of a final shift in the match. Vekic’s chance to take command of the match had arrived.
Instead, Goerges popped a first serve to the “T,” and followed it up with a backhand down-the-line winner, classic execution of a 1-2 punch, to get to 15-15. Two points later, at 30-30, she pulled the trigger on a running forehand that forced Vekic into a defensive position. Goerges followed her shot to the net, but Vekic made a high – and impressive – retrieval that left Goerges little choice but to back up and hit a forehand swing-volley in the air from less than two meters inside the baseline. She smacked it right on the corner for a winner. She pumped her fist and let out her loudest scream of the match in relief. It was after all at 3-3, 30-30, in the third set, that she pulled those shots of her hat. Yet, that point alone was only a part of the whole.
Outside of the double fault to start that 3-3 game, Goerges committed no unforced errors from that point forward and won eight out of the last nine points to shut the curtains down on Vekic with a 6-3 3-6 6-3 victory. In that short segment, she also hit four winners and an ace.
In the semifinals, she faced qualifier Bouchard who had guaranteed her reentry to the top 100 by reaching the semifinal round and was riding a five-match winning streak, first one since her breakthrough year in 2014. Playing solid from the baseline and keeping the balls deep, Bouchard built a 7-6 5-3 lead on Goerges before the pendulum began tilting, sharply and suddenly, in the German’s favor.
Julia had her back against the wall when Bouchard served for the match at 5-4. It is true that Bouchard could not buy a first serve in that game and double-faulted at 15-15. Nevertheless, it also undeniably true that Goerges nailed three forehand winners on the most important points of the game. The first was to start it, the second at 30-30, the third to end it and earn the break. After Goerges held serve to grab the 6-5 lead, she broke the Canadian’s serve again at love, hitting two return winners in the process. In a matter of few minutes, she went from being two points away from defeat to starting a third set.
Although Goerges may have recorded a stunning +22 difference in the number of winners vs. unforced errors (48-26) for the match, the seven winners that she hit in those three games mattered the most. They came when she found herself in the do-or-die. They also bore dire consequences for her opponent Bouchard because Goerges never looked back, winning 10 out of the last 11 games to get past the Canadian 6-7 7-5 6-1 in two hours and two minutes.
In Saturday’s final, Goerges prevailed in two close sets to outlast the former top-ten player and qualifier Belinda Bencic and earn her second WTA title of the year. Bencic, the 21-year-old Swiss, is climbing back toward the top 20 after a miserable 2016 campaign that saw her suffer from a wrist injury, ultimately requiring surgery and causing her to plummet outside the top 100. She is currently ranked no.47 and poised to climb higher next week following her run this week.
On Saturday, both players had little trouble holding comfortably. For a player to take command, she either needed to pull a few magic shots on a return game, or her adversary had to gag points away on her serving game. Goerges did the former and pulled ahead. At 2-2, she exclusively went for bazooka returns on every point. She missed two out of the first three, going down 30-15. She made the next three, two of them resulting in clean winners, and the other, an almost-clean one. Four huge returns made brought Goerges the only break that she needed, to win the set.
It would not be fair though if I did not mention the 5-4 game. Goerges rode the early break until 5-4 and had the chance to serve the set out. She lost the first point when she sailed her forehand deep. She did not let the scoreboard pressure get to her. She served her first ace of the match to get to 15-15. Two points later, another big first serve brought her two set points at 40-15. She only needed the first. Another vintage 1-2 punch 3ending with a forehand winner put the first set in Julia’s pocket. It was perhaps her best serving game of the match, right when it counted the most.
In the second set, Goerges found herself serving at 4-5 to remain alive in the second set. She met the bar, yet again! Cool as a cucumber, she served four first serves to hold serve, one being an ace, the other two resulting in follow-up winners. In the next game on Bencic’s serve at 5-5, Goerges produced three more winners but also got an assist from her opponent when Bencic missed a high-forehand volley from the top of the net. That was the decisive break.
In the 6-5 game, Goerges earned her first match point at 40-0 when she served two aces and hit an unreturnable second serve. On her second match point at 40-15, Goerges pulled her umpteenth 1-2 punch winner to earn the title with a score of 6-4 7-5.
Goerges had 19 more winners than unforced errors (35-16), another spectacular spread in those numbers. She never faced a break point in the match. However, the stringing together of a few great points by Goerges at crucial junctures mentioned above played the largest role in deciding the match. Goerges seemed to find the extra gear whenever she needed it.
The above-noted segments from her last three matches are fresh in Goerges’s memory. When one uses the type of aggressive game that she plays, confidence can be the cornerstone of one’s performance. For three days and three matches, Goerges repeatedly met the bar, and that should mean something. I would not be surprised if a series of wins like these, combined with the title, propel her to a period of rapid improvement, perhaps even to the next level in her progress, whatever that may represent to her.
A baseline player who mainly operates on safe groundstrokes and consistency can maintain a certain level even during a down cycle in confidence. In the case of a striker like Goerges, down cycles can be painful and filled with an abundance of sprayed errors. At the same time, that which she can accomplish would have no limits if she can ride on a high degree of confidence and belief. If anything at all, the Luxembourg Open serves to bring Goerges closer to that ride.
Until next time…
The Wuhan Open, through the round of 16, was marked by upsets. None of the top 15 players made it to the quarterfinals. My piece focuses on the quarterfinals, semifinals, and final.
For my latest contribution to Tennis with an Accent:
Wuhan Open Analysis — Second Serves Acquired First Importance
Until next time…