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Broke Ass Portugal Open 2013 - brief notes

20K views 95 replies 47 participants last post by  Corswandt 
#1 · (Edited)
Day 1 - Q1R

Q draw was stacked, with many interesting players, and for the most it delivered. Decent to good quality tennis, well contested matches despite the terrible conditions.

Svitolina d. Bratchikova 6-2, 6-4

Full match.

4 (four) actual spectators in attendance as the first ball was struck.

Immediate impression given by Svitolina - a lightweight puffballer with a nothing game. Her assets aren't immediately apparent - consistency, above average movement and defensive skills and above all good shot selection and control and the ability to deal with unusual game situations (which in these days means "anything other than standard issue baseline power rallies"). This helps explain her successes at the challenger level, but one can't help being left with the impression that she can quite easily be overpowered by a power player on her game - starting with ROS; Svitolina's 1st serve averages c. 150-155 km/h.

Bratchikova had her left knee taped and clearly wasn't match fit - movement was hampered, and she couldn't serve properly.

Bratchikova's FH is a much heavier shot than anything Svitolina has on her own arsenal, and she managed to use it to hit through Svitolina a few times - but also a bit wild, and she overhit it quite often, particularly from once inside the baseline. Tried to boss points on return with aggressive ROS, but the conditions were difficult - both players made use of junk and improvised scooped up shots and Bratchikova struggled the most with it given her physical problems.

First set had no deuces and went by very quickly. Svitolina had her chances to finish she second set much more easily, but it still felt NID.

Puig d. Torro-Flor 0-6, 6-4, 6-4

Third set.

Puig is fun to watch - her BH is superb, she nails it DTL with the utmost ease, she's very pugnacious and hits very well on the run, making for spectacular rallies.

Torro-Flor is another atypical Spaniard. Her serve is rock solid, extremely well placed, and her instincts are clearly aggressive. She went up 4-3 in the third set after saving 3 BPs with gutsy play, and for a while it seemed Puig had given it her all and still failed to get herself in the lead. However Puig kept up her level and eventually stepped up to serve for the match. Anticlimactic - Puig was serving against the wind (a gale at that time) and under pressure yet Torro-Flor failed to even get the rallies going.





Anastasia Rodionova d. Garcia 7-5, 2-6, 6-1

Whole match.

Same old for Garcia.

Garcia at her best is a scary good flat shotmaker from both sides with one of the best serves you're likely to see at this level. BH, FH, serve all excellent from a purely technical POV. However her court positioning is still very much a work in progress, as she never seems to know when to step in and have a go at the ball and when to rally from behind the baseline. When she was flattening out her shots, Rodionova just couldn't handle her pace. But once pressure sets in she starts adding more spin to her shots and lets herself get dragged into neutral rallies in which all her weaknesses are made apparent - her BH seemed quite consistent for a while, but then there were patches in which she would thrown away whole games with needless errors on apparently easy rally BHs. Her footwork remains very poor, her movement to her BH side atrocious and easily explotaible, her shot selection often retarded. Last three games or so she didn't bother to contest.

Savinykh d. Oudin 3-6 6-2 6-2

From 5-0 for Oudin in the first.

Surprisingly decent quality match between two aggressive baseline grinders with very similar builds and somewhat similar games.

Savinykh is more consistent and has a stronger drive BH; Oudin is more resourceful and more willing to use her BH slice, dropshots and other such cute stuff.

Savinykh has a very solid ground game, but remains as one-dimensional as I remembered her, and her usually solid serve wasn't very effective in this gale. Still, she was always the more solid player and far from the less aggresive one. Last two sets were quite patchy from Oudin, save for a late surge of surprisingly good play from her near the very end of the match.

Konta d. Putintseva 4-6 6-1 7-5

Last two sets. A good match (tightly contested, exciting third set) played before a large crowd for Court 1 standards.

I had seen Konta play at Eastbourne last year and I very much liked what I saw. She has aggressive instincts, a very big game, a very good serve, a rocket of a BH and is excellent at the net. She showed all of that today, particularly the net play - quite a feat at this disgusting muck they call "red clay".

Putintseva on the other hand I had heard a lot about but seen nothing. So I was a bit surprised by what I saw. Her ground game really has very little actual bite - her FH is a whippy moonball she uses mostly to push her opponents back behind the baseline, and she often slices her BH (biting, low bouncing slice even on clay, it must be said). Her serve is as good as it can be considering her size (her service motion is excellent, with some outward similarities with Federer's), but it's still attackable, though not her worst liability. She's extremely pugnacious and a born competitor though - she played her very best at all the key points of the match, but Konta didn't miss enough.

What I liked the most about her game was her ROS - usually a weakness in younger players, let alone players with such a small wingspan as Putintseva. She makes excellent use of a block ROS that is a sign that she has very good hands.



 
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#6 ·
Thanks for posting! Enjoyed reading it.

Nice pics of Monica. :)
 
#10 ·
Lots of tweets by players about the wind

Anastasia Rodionova ‏@arodionova
40km/h wind... What we played today wasn't tennis

Svetlana Kuznetsova ‏@SvetlanaK27
I think Estoril is very beautiful ! But with this weather is very hard to play tennis... Wind , please can you stop???

Galina Voskoboeva ‏@g_voskoboeva
I won my 1 match! Very tough conditions! Last few days wind blows like crazy! Not much clay left at the courts��
 
#24 ·
That's quite a pouch on Putintseva. Never really noticed that in her. Was her movement good?
Very good, but that's a lot of court to cover on such short legs.

Any word on Rodionova? How did she play? How was her on-court attitude?
She played solid bar a few patches. 'Tude was the usual - lots of mumbling and berating herself and everyone in several different languages, but only a couple of full outbursts (one was when she lost the second set due to a point penalty on account of dropping her cap for the second time when SP down).

Nice photos of Puig. Never realised she was so attractive.
First time I saw photos of Puig I thought she had a serious case of manface going on. But she's attractive indeed, albeit in a very unconventional way.

Do you see this tournament survive for another 3 to 5 years, Corswandt?
Dunno. If it's still beind held, that's all due to it being the flagship event of the organisers, who still have a lot of clout as the largest organisers of sports events in the country. MMs that lose money/served their purpose of promoting the place where the event is held get shut down after 2-3 years, so if this tournament was going to fold, it would have done so already.
 
#18 ·
Your awesome reportage almost makes up for the fact Jo-La got bumped off in the qualies. :sobbing:
 
#19 ·
Day 1 - Q1R

Anastasia Rodionova d. Garcia 7-5, 2-6, 6-1

Whole match.

Same old for Garcia.

Garcia at her best is a scary good flat shotmaker from both sides with one of the best serves you're likely to see at this level. BH, FH, serve all excellent from a purely technical POV. However her court positioning is still very much a work in progress, as she never seems to know when to step in and have a go at the ball and when to rally from behind the baseline. When she was flattening out her shots, Rodionova just couldn't handle her pace. But once pressure sets in she starts adding more spin to her shots and lets herself get dragged into neutral rallies in which all her weaknesses are made apparent - her BH seemed quite consistent for a while, but then there were patches in which she would thrown away whole games with needless errors on apparently easy rally BHs. Her footwork remains very poor, her movement to her BH side atrocious and easily explotaible, her shot selection often retarded. Last three games or so she didn't bother to contest.
Great reports :)

Any word on Rodionova? How did she play? How was her on-court attitude?
 
#20 ·
Day 1 - Q1R

Q draw was stacked, with many interesting players, and for the most it delivered. Decent to good quality tennis, well contested matches despite the terrible conditions.

Svitolina d. Bratchikova 6-2, 6-4

Full match.

4 (four) actual spectators in attendance as the first ball was struck.

Immediate impression given by Svitolina - a lightweight puffballer with a nothing game. Her assets aren't immediately apparent




Светльо;27262426 said:
You hateful little twat.
 
#25 ·
You must spread some reputation before giving it to Corswandt again.
 
#26 ·
Day 2 - QR2

Conditions somewhat better than yesterday, at least on the outside courts, but the tennis on display was way, way worse.

Puig d. Feuerstein 6-3, 6-0

Whole match.

Feuerstein's game is even weirder than its description would suggest (a lefty with a one-handed BH) - she plays from WAY behind the baseline (which at times helped her absorb Puig's pace), and can hit a big flat FH when given the chance, but usually down the middle of the court as she rarely opens angles. But above all, she's way too erratic and was simply unable to rally for more than 2-3 shots without missing. Her junk, somewhat reminiscent of Barrois', wasn't particularly reliable or effective.

Some of Puig's weaknesses were exposed (ROS is average to poor, her 2nd serve quite weak and even her 1st can be attacked on occasion, her BH DTL is usually effective but sometimes netted - it's a lower % shot than it seemed to me yesterday), but overall she made short work of Feuerstein without needless fuss.

Voskoboeva d. Svitolina 7-6(8), 3-6, 6-1

From 3-0 in the second for Svitolina to the end of that set.

Wasn't there long enough to provide much in the way of commentary. Match seemed very poorly played, with Voskoboeva missing a lot yet blowing Svitolina clean off the court whenever she didn't miss. Fled to Court Central only to be exposed to pure horror.

Castaño d. Tsurenko 6-3, 6-7(5), 7-5

Third set.

I don't care about the conditions - there can be no excuses for the way Tsurenko played today. I mean, Castaño is underpowered, can barely move or defend these days and misses a lot to boot, and Tsurenko somehow managed to play even worse than her. Tsurenko's CC FH is the only shot she can hit with a measure of consistency, and her serve would be dire at any level; wholesale DFs, and often around 115 km/h even on 1st - WTF?

Rezai d. Savinykh 6-4, 6-4

Whole match.

Savinykh was playing without a serve and was trying to beat Rezai at her own game of baseline bashing - not smart. She was just giving Rezai cleanly struck, midpaced balls for her to whack away. Rezai steadily improved as the match went along (serve decently even for her old standards), and by the end of the match there was some fabulous shotmaking from her. Her BH remains a wonderful shot.

Went to Centralito only to see Konta retiring due to injury, and then to Court 1 to see the last couple of games of Cabeza Candela d. Pereira.
 
#38 ·
Castaño d. Tsurenko 6-3, 6-7(5), 7-5

Third set.

I don't care about the conditions - there can be no excuses for the way Tsurenko played today. I mean, Castaño is underpowered, can barely move or defend these days and misses a lot to boot, and Tsurenko somehow managed to play even worse than her. Tsurenko's CC FH is the only shot she can hit with a measure of consistency, and her serve would be dire at any level; wholesale DFs, and often around 115 km/h even on 1st - WTF?
:help: Oh Lesia. The year started so well. Then again this is the woman who made 91 UEs against FICHMAN in Fed Cup.

Her FH is a club level shot so if that was her better wing in the match...:facepalm:
 
#27 ·
OOP for tomorrow is a joke - the organisers are still pretending the ATP event is stronger than the WTA, and you get six random mugs without a single ATP title to their name on Central while Kuznetsova gets to play in shite Centralito and Wickmayer (whatever you think of her, she's a former champion here) is dumped to the outer outside courts.

And Tuesday will be worse - still a lot of interesting WTA first rounders to be played, yet the ATP matches are sure to be given priority in terms of scheduling.
 
#28 ·
Agree with you. Kuzzie/Lepchenko on Centralito instead of central court is a joke. I don't understand French male players choice (Paire and Roger-Vasselin). TV requests ?

For me Portuguese players on central central is quite logical.


Anyways, it's good to read your reports. Have a nice day.
 
#40 ·
I love Corswandt's reports. Although nothing can match his reports from Eastbourne, when he wrote that he was the first Portuguese ever who got sunburnt in England. :sobbing:
 
#44 ·
Harder than Chloe Sevigny with a mouthful of Vincent Gallo?
 
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