Wednesday Update:
My latest match report/analysis of the quarterfinal match between Simona Halep and Angelique Kerber is now posted on Tennis with an Accent —> Minding Her Own Business: Halep Wins with Her Head
Note: You can also follow Tennis with an Accent for great coverage of Roland Garros. I am delighted to be contributing to their efforts this week.
I am sure that by the time the top seed Simona Halep entered the court to face the 16th-seeded Elise Mertens, on a cloudy day at Roland Garros, she had a game plan set in her mind, one that her and her coaching team agreed upon. Whether she could execute that plan to perfection or not mattered less, at the end of the day, than her putting a check mark in the win column.
Because for Halep fans, you see, playing an exquisite brand of tennis in the fourth round of a Major, while rewarding, is not a primary concern in the grander context of their player’s pursuit of the holy grail. And they may have a point. She has already reached the second week of a Major a number of times doing just that – playing high-quality tennis – and it did not necessarily translate into what seems to have become her career-defining goal over the last few years.
Halep wants to – needs to – win a Major.
I reckon that she would have taken the win against Mertens, no matter how she gets it, and not mind experiencing a one-match delay in producing her best tennis. It is rather in the next three matches that she will need to “put the package together,” so to speak, in order to achieve that which she craves and, in my opinion, deserves. More on that at the end.
She faced an opponent who has been in fine form over the last several months. Mertens, a high-IQ, player with a variety of strokes at her disposal, has amassed three WTA titles this year (Hobart, Lugano, Rabat) and reached the semifinal round of the Australian Open. She is also currently ranked no.16, a career high for the Belgian.
Although Halep defeated Mertens handily in Madrid (6-3 6-0) and halted her 13-match winning streak – including her two Fedcup wins –, it seemed overboard to expect a similar type of rout here.
Indeed, it started as if it would be tight match. The first four games featured long rallies, with both women moving each other around and looking for openings. Mertens held the first game, producing two winners, both stemming from well-hit first serves, allowing her to execute the 1-2 punch to perfection twice. Halep responded with an almost replica of that on her serve the next game, with a couple of 1-2 punch winning combinations of her own.
By the third game, both players were deeply focused on their tasks and rallies were tenacious. It turned out to be the key game of the match, one in which each player had chances to win the game, but the other kept on digging deep and coming back. There was one slight problem for Mertens. It was her service game and she double-faulted three times in it. The last one came on her fourth opportunity to hold. Halep won the next two points and closed the 18-point-long game.
Little did we know that Simona would never relinquish the lead for the rest of the match.
The world number one played a very aggressive brand of tennis, more than she has shown in the past. Apparently, that was deliberate. She said on her on-court interview after the 6-2 6-1 win that her goal was to be her “more aggressive,” but not necessarily in terms of winners, but of speed production in her shots.
She started hitting the ball hard from the beginning of the match and it did indeed work in her favor. It kept Mertens pinned behind the baseline, preoccupied with just getting ball back in the court. Naturally, that also meant that Simona herself, in return, made more errors. But that was understood and accepted. The intention was to keep Mertens so busy chasing balls that she could never got the luxury of calibrating her full arsenal of weapons.
The few times Elise did get the chance, Halep had the answers. She tried to sneak in some drop shots, Simona was quick with her first step. She tried to slice low, Simona stepped forward quickly, got under the ball, and accelerated on those, taking time away from her. She attempted to increase the pace of the rally, Simona counter-punched with interest.
Halep finished with more winners than Mertens but for a while in the first set, until she built a firm lead, she also committed more unforced errors than Mertens. The final score will not tell the tale of how contested the first twenty minutes of this match was. Halep, for her part, was very much aware of it:
“It was not that easy, like the score shows. All the games were tough. She’s a tough opponent. I had to pay attention of every ball we played.”
“Those four games at the beginning were really important, and after that I relax myself and I could play a little bit better.”
Play better, she did.
She put on a recital after those first twenty minutes, especially with her down-the-line accelerations on both sides. Leading 4-2, Halep broke her opponent’s serve for the second time when she hit an emphatic backhand cross-court winner at deuce and followed that up with a backhand down-the-line passing shot. Then, she shifted to a higher gear and cruised the rest of the way, making only four unforced errors until the end.
Mertens’s observations were no different: “She was too strong, too good for me. The first four games were more or less my level, but it was just these four games. Afterwards, I made a lot of mistakes. I wanted to be too aggressive. But she was everywhere. She served pretty well. That’s it.”
So, at the end of the day, Halep got her cake and ate it too. She got the win and performed at an extremely elevated level. The question still remains, can she “put the package together” for three more matches? Starting with the quarterfinal round, the dynamics will shift, and it will have a lot to do with the individual standing on the other side of the net.
On Wednesday, it will be Angelique Kerber. And against Angie, Simona cannot just take the win “no matter how she gets it” – yes, I quoted myself from above, I know, it’s despicable – because she will not get the win unless she produces high quality tennis. It will not stop there either. If she succeeds, she will need to do it again to conquer her semifinal opponent, and again, to get to the holy grail.
There are players who barely survive the early rounds, not playing particularly well, only to peak in the last couple of matches and win titles. There are also those who begin the tournament well and ride that confidence all the way to the title. And then, there are those who peak during a tournament, only to see their form take a nosedive in the semifinal or final rounds.
Halep fans can only hope that their player belongs to that middle group, because her performance today on the Philippe Chatrier court was nothing short of sublime.
Saturday Update:
My latest match report/analysis of Anett Kontaveit’s 7-6 7-6 upset win over Petra Kvitova is now posted on Tennis with an Accent —> Kontaveit Conquers Kvitova in a Hodgepodge Galore
Note: You can also follow Tennis with an Accent for great coverage of Roland Garros. I am delighted to be contributing to their efforts this week.
My match recap/analysis of Mihaela Buzarnescu’s straight-set upset win over 4th-seeded Elina Svitolina on Friday will appear on Tennis with an Accent website. Once it is posted, I will add the link here.
UPDATE: My piece is now posted at Tennis with an Accent —> Click here to read: “Delayed by a Dozen Years”
Note: You can also follow Tennis with an Accent for great coverage of Roland Garros. I am delighted to be contributing to their efforts this week.
Mihaela Buzarnescu is one ‘heckuva’ player. She has dazzling shot-making skills that she is able to showcase thanks to her terrific footwork which allows her to get into the right position for every shot. She has the confidence to do well on any stage at this point, thanks to her impressive results over the last several months.
She has reached the only two WTA finals of her career this year (Hobart on hard courts, Prague on clay) and rapidly climbed up the WTA rankings from no.377 a year ago to number 33 currently. She is a crafty left-handed player who likes to control rallies and keep them short if possible. Thus, she will not shy away from using drops shots, taking a floating ball in the air for a put-away swing-volley, or coming to the net on any short balls that she manages to squeeze out of her opponent.
She took on Rebecca Peterson who can strike an impressive forehand and, if allowed, make her opponent chase one ball after another. The 97th-ranked Swede was playing her fifth match in one week, having come through qualifying rounds. In other words, Buzarnescu was facing against a player who, like her, preferred to take charge of rallies by powering up her ground strokes.
The good news for Buzarnescu was that, in just about every facet of the game, her skills to put that game plan to use were more developed than those of her opponent. This is precisely the type of match-up that often creates lop-sided numbers on the scoreboard, one in which both players build their A game plan on the same notion, but one party does everything a bit better than the other. Consequently, the better party negates the other’s strengths because the latter rarely ever gets a chance to use them.
Thus, the 6-1 6-2 victory for the Romanian player that lasted barely over an hour.
For example, Peterson did not get to control many rallies with her forehand, because she often found herself on defense, scrambling to retrieve Buzarnescu’s penetrating shots. She did not get to build the point on a solid first serve because Mihaela would fire the returns back, even if she missed one or two in the process – that partially explains why Peterson won less than half of the points started on her serve.
To Peterson’s credit, she recognized her opponent’s superiority in those areas in her post-match talk, but could not seem to do much about it: “It’s tough when someone is playing so solid as she did today. It’s tough to feel the rhythm to come in the match, to get the chance and the opportunities, I mean, I got no excuses, she played well.”
Believe it or not, there was an early moment in the match where Peterson had Buzarnescu in some trouble. She held her serve to start the match and went up 15-40 on Buzarnescu’s serve. The Romanian played her first dominant point of the match (Peterson dominated the early few rallies) and saved the first break point with a winning volley. On the 30-40 point, Peterson committed her only unforced backhand of the set. Who knew at that moment that it would be lights out for Peterson from that point forward?
It was indeed like if Buzarnescu suddenly shifted gears. She struck a forehand winner on the deuce point and followed it up with an exquisite 1-2-punch point to hold serve. The winners just kept coming. Buzarnescu hit 13 of them to win six games in a row and pocket the first set 6-1.
The same pattern continued until 2-0 in the second set. In that third game (and if you have watched Buzarnescu regularly, this will not come as a surprise), over what appeared to be a minor error in the grand scheme of things, Buzarnescu lost it.
Remember how Simona Halep was leading Jelena Ostapenko 3-0 in the final set of the 2017 Roland Garros final and got mad over one simple mistake? One from which she could not mentally recover quickly, and how that was partially responsible for why she let Ostapenko get back in the match on that day? Well, Buzarnescu pulled a Halep, except in much smaller scale, when she missed a forehand at 2-0, 15-0 in the second. It was neither a break point, nor a crucial one at that stage of the match. It was a mistake that allowed Peterson to get to 15-15 at a time in the match when Buzarnescu was on cruise control to win with ease.
Nothing less, nothing more.
Buzarnescu did not take it that way though.
She got mad and complained to herself for a good 10 seconds. If you did not know the score, you would have thought that the mistake cost her a break point in the late stages of a match. There was absolutely no need to have that kind of overblown reaction.
The first consequence of that kind of negativity coming out of nowhere is that it can carry over to the next point and take you out of cruise control. Well, it did…
She made another mistake at 15-15 and started to slam her racket to the ground out of anger but held back at the last second. She verbally complained some more. Two points later, Buzarnescu committed her third unforced error in four points to lose her serve. It was the only time she lost her serve, a game in which she committed almost half of her total number of unforced errors for the match. Bizarre, to say the least.
The second consequence of such an outburst is that the other player discovers hope where she thought there were none. Peterson, with renewed hope, followed that break with her best game of the match, holding serve on a forehand winner to get to 2-2.
Again, I ask: why? Why go berserk on an error at 6-1, 2-0, 15-0 when everything seems to be clicking on all cylinders? I am sure that is a question that Buzarnescu and her team have tackled. It does not change the fact that the glitch created by that one-error-related outburst took two full games to repair.
Fortunately for her – or, unfortunately for Peterson – Buzarnescu calmed down and she was able to buckle her belt and stick the landing. And the difference was so obvious! As soon as she focused back on business, she only lost five points from 2-2 to 6-2.
Buzarnescu’s next-round opponent is the fourth seed, and a possible candidate for the title, Elina Svitolina. No glitches or outbursts allowed!
Polona Hercog def. Maria Sakkari 6-4 6-2
Polona Hercog’s game, while she is riding the high end of a confidence cycle, can be a treat tow watch. Kuznetsova was on the receiving end of 20 winners in the first set in the quarterfinals yesterday and Sakkari’s fate today in the first set was not much different. The 48th-ranked Greek player tried to use every bit of her athletic ability to keep up with the steady onslaught of winners and drop shots flowing steadily from her opponent’s racket. She even saved a set point at 3-5, but Hercog’s form proved too much for her at the end as the 75th-ranked Slovenian wrapped the first set up 6-4. It was thanks to a sizzling start right out of the gates to go up a break, an advantage that Hercog held on to until the end of the set.
The only moment of concern during that set was when she led 3-2 and committed a rare couple of dismal errors – one on an easy overhead missed wide – to go down a break point. However, when you perform with confidence, those moments appear as nothing more than nuisances rather than turning points. Hercog quickly corrected course with two spectacular winners to hold serve and continue the ride. It was the first set that Sakkari lost this week, although that sentence does not accurately reflect reality since it was rather Hercog who won it.
Polona had experienced a letdown in her match yesterday after dominating the first set against Kuznetsova, therefore Sakkari needed to remain calm and keep pressing on the pedal. First few games of a set are often where shifts in balance occur in tennis matches. Maria also needed a few more first serves after serving at 44% in the first set – 27% at 4-2 down.
Losing a blank game on her serve to start the second set meant that the shift was not appearing anytime soon on the horizon for the Greek player. In fact, if anything at all, it was a repeat of the first set. Hercog held to go up 2-0 and here we were, once again, watching Sakkari trail Hercog by a break.
Hercog took it a step further by increasing her lead with a second break after a contested game at 3-1 in which Sakkari fought hard to stay within distance, ultimately falling short. Seemingly with “nothing left to lose” – I use quotation marks because that phrase is never true – at 2-5, she tried to take returns early and get to the net. It did temporarily catch Hercog off-guard and allow Sakkari to earn three break points at 0-40. It proved to be nothing more than a momentary glitch as Hercog climbed back to hold and end the match with a score of 6-4 6-2.
It was a convincing win for Hercog. She never wavered from her game plan and kept pushing Sakkari around from the beginning of the match to the end.
Pauline Parmentier def. Irina-Camelia Begu 6-3 6-4
The desired pattern of play was the same for either player in this match. It consisted of running around the backhand whenever possible, dictating play with heavy forehands, and approaching the net if the opponent’s ball landed short. Having a high first-serve percentage plays a significant role in this type of match since getting the upper hand on your opponent early in the point allows you to impose your plan while denying your opponent the same.
Hence, the fact that neither player served well early in the match could somewhat explain the four straight breaks to start the match. After two straight holds to get to 3-3, Begu had an error-prone game on the seventh game, losing her serve again with a backhand unforced mistake into the net. Parmentier now had a chance to break free late in the set, with her serve to follow at 4-3.
Begu helped her get to break points in that game on two separate occasions, at 30-30 and deuce, by missing an easy volley on the first, and hitting wide a routine forehand inside-out winner from inside the service line on the second. Although Parmentier could not capitalize on those two chances, she eventually broke the Romanian’s serve a few points later to become the first player to lead by two games at 5-3. All credit to Parmentier in the 5-4 game as she seized the first set-point opportunity that she got, to produce a spectacular forehand winner from a difficult position behind the baseline.
Second set began much like the first, with Begu breaking in the first game on the heels of Parmentier’s fourth double fault of the match. Begu was again unable to confirm the break due to a couple of untimely errors on forehand accelerations – last one coming on break point.
Parmentier, for her part, stayed a lot more composed than her opponent on crucial points, staying within her limits. For example, she would still keep some of the topspin on her forehand swings even when she went for clean winners, instead of flattening them out for warp-speed winner attempts like Begu was attempting. It ultimately led her to the victory, winning eight out of the last points to close the curtain on her opponent with a score of 6-3 6-4.
At the end of the day, Begu simply committed few too many errors on winner attempts, mostly with her forehand, like the ones that put her down 3-5 in the first set and 3-4 in the second. It’s a frustrating way to lose a close match because it means that she played with the right game plan and earned her chances to finish points but misfired on execution shots.
Tomorrow in the finals, it will be Polona Hercog aiming for her third WTA title, her first since 2012 (Bastad) taking on Pauline Parmentier who is, for her part, aiming for her third WTA title as well, first since 2008 (Bad Gastein).