Good News: Dinara played well. She fought her heart out. She changed her service motion (incredibly Lena-esque) and it (mostly) worked. She hit some delicious down the line backhand winners. Her back didn’t explode. She fist pumped, yelled, squealed, and…
(Bad News:): Lost.
But really? I’m ok with that. Wicky was playing damn good tennis, and putting away just about all the points she should have won, including those off of big first serves. That being said, Dinara’s defense looked solid and I saw very few needless or silly errors.
Dinara really had to fight and scrounge for the second set and by the third set, the tank was pretty empty. Wicky kept playing consistent, attacking tennis and took it pretty easily. However, fear not Dinara fans! I was impressed. I’d love to see her take on some lower ranked opponents, and see how well she can dictate play on her terms. Things are coming together.
Really? Maybe I’m just hard to please, then.
I thought she played well for parts of the match (that tiebreak was really well done), but for the most part it’s still way, way, way too much running around 8 feet behind the baseline. And way, way, way too many loopy shots once the rally went past 3-4 shots for Yanina to take advantage of. I’m not holding my breath.
Yeah, true there. Honestly felt a lot of it was just solid hitting, particularly out wide, by Yanina. Though yeah, some particularly loopy shots and the second serve is still killing her.
I think a lot of people underestimate Yanina too and what a tricky opponent she can be. She fizzled out in the second half of last year, perhaps in part due to her elbow issues, can’t say i pay that much attention to her either, but she can be a force to reckon with and thats a decent scoreline (can you read anything into scorelines?)