USO OOP....Day 8... 9/2/19

[rex]

Julia G......please..... She was up 5-3 in the 2nd to finish, loses such and the 3rd..... After taking apart Kiki, she loses to Vekic? c'mon....

[Grossefavourite]

Bencic just ruined the rest of the USO.

[Ace2Ace]

I caught the match when Bencic was serving for the 1st set at 40-30. Missed the whole first set and was wondering what was going on. Then I saw the stat; Naomi with bunch of aces vs 0 for Bencic as expected.... but tons of errors.
I was watching Julia Georges. I thought the Osaka match was after this one.. almost missed it totally. How can I been watching Julia when the Japanese Ninja is playing? That's a no no no no.

So I was eager to see the rest of the Naomi match. And there it was. Naomi playing Bencic's game... trying to over-rally her .. bad strategy.... very very bad idea...
Bencic is Hingis 2.0. She is not going to beat herself with tons of UE. You got to step inside the lines and take her out cold. You can't push balls around when playing her. That's her game and she is excellent at it. She can hit 1000 balls all day effortlessly.
No surprise Naomi was losing the rallies.. You play long rallies against Wozaniacki,Keber, Bencic, Svitolina, they' ll beat you flat. lol lol.
Bye bye darling. Please get Sasha back.

Back to Julia who was destroying Vecic all match long. Then comes the time to serve for the match. The woman who was serving beautifully, hitting aces and services winners, suddenly couldn't find a first serve. Double-faults 3 times. can't get the ball over the net. And gets broken.. and eventually loses the match. I guess that's Julia Gorgeous in a nutshell. How do you not close out that match with the way you served all match long + hitting 40+ winners in less than 2 sets?

These girls can hit 200 mhp serves; but when the game is at stake, they fall apart.
Serena will always be the best server the world has ever seen, male or female. Under pressure, she's most likely to hit aces and service winners where others hit double faults.

[rex]

Bencic just ruined the rest of the USO.

No she didn't, not for me at least. Serena is still in it, but am concerned about her ankle injury. She exactly hasn't handled injuries well post-pregnancy (blowing a 5-1 lead in the 3rd to KP at the AO qtrs after rolling her ankle and not calling a trainer; retiring with back spasms in Toronto for the gold). But, I'm not holding anything against Serena, for she's performing extremely well at age 38, is still believed to be the best on the women's Tour at age 38, remains the player to beat at this event, which is just "remarkable" and "unprecedented". Yet, if she loses or walks-over, Belinda winning this event is fine with me (Class of '97) and it would be good for her, recovering from injuries and surgeries after she had reached the top-10 as a 19/20 year old. Having crawled back up the rankings the hard way (ITF events 25ks, 60ks) w/o a bucket load of WCs to Tour events, like they gave the doper, it would be a fitting tribute to her resolve to win this event at this point in her career.

[Ace2Ace]

Agree. Bencic fought her way back without loads of WC.
Azarenka is still trying. Not easy.
Congratulation to the youngsters.

[Graveller]

For me, it is not that Osaka plays Bencic's game: Osaka plays as usual, but Bencic take the ball earlier, and simply follows Osaka until she gets an opening. Osaka is not used that someone manages to deal with her baseline game that long without making some error on witch she can capitalise. So she keeps her very monotonous baseline game. And when Bencic starts to redirect and starts to create angles, she fails.

Why is Osaka not doing that? Because, - like Rex says - she can't: that kind of strategy would be a Plan B, which she is lacking.
I predicted that she would be outside the top 16 once the US open and AO open points from her wins were gone.. Well, she indeed failed to defend most of the US Open points. Expect the same at the AO2020.

There was not a single top10 player left in the top half after R3.. and she fails at the first decent hurdle.

[Grossefavourite]

Just go for broke, Ahn!!! You've got nothing to lose.

[Graveller]

Just go for broke, Ahn!!! You've got nothing to lose.

When I read this support from you to Ahn, I knew it would be easy for Mertens...
And a bit later, we got 6-1 6-1 for Elise

[Grossefavourite]

This is why the event hypes Coco and others in the early rounds because there's no guarantee the stars will make it to the latter stages, and the way it's looking, semi-finals and finals could be a complete letdown.

Bencic, Mertens, Svitolina, et al....

[rex]

Tiger Woods in the house for Rafael's 4 set win over Marin....