Insanely impressive win today for Superhero as she knocks out Justine, 2-6, 6-1, 6-4. Sam was broken in the opening game of the match, and was broken again with a couple points that she should have won. All set long you got the sense that she was slowly chipping away at Justine, and was hitting some ridiculous Rafa-like run around forehand winners. the scoreline of the first set really doesn’t reflect exactly what was going on.

Sam carried the momentum into the second set and that’s when things got messy. Sam started using the kick serve to her advantage, using her power and topspin and the errors from Justine came out in full force. As did the second serves, which Sam jumped all over and was winning most of. It felt like it was only a matter of time.

Justine wasn’t going to give up that easily, however, and came out fighting. The errors came back, though, and Sam got the early break to go up 3-2. Arms and legs of steel, nerves of… back to back double faults. Couple of errors, and Justine got things back on serve. But Sam kept pumping herself up, kept using the forehand, kick serves, and keep Justine off balance on her forehand and eventually broke at 4-all and then closed it out.

It was super impressive stuff from Sam, who really used momentum and kept her compusure when serving for the match. Justine is still playing for broke and isn’t employing a whole lot of variety. I really only remember her using the drop shot twice, and she was void of solutions for the epic Superhero serves.

Next up is Serena, which is going to be quite the battle on clay, especially because the kick serve is working, and it should be effective in throwing off Serena’s power as well. Bring it.