Well I'm back. No one has posted the score, but Ishizu def. Jaksic 4/6 7/6 6/4
To be honest, I wasn't too impressed. I enjoyed watching her, but I'm surprised her WTA rank is as high as it is. The match pretty much revolved around Jaksic is a generic ball basher and is possibly the most annoying player I have ever seen in my life. If she makes it big and behaves like she did in this match, General Messages will crucify the girl. Jaksic has the most annoying grunt ever and after every point, be it a winner or an error from Ishizu, she would scream AJDE at the top of her lungs, much much worse than Ivanovic.
To be frank, Jaksic was also pretty fat and the match could have been over soooo much quicker if Sachie moved her around more, which she didn't. To her credit, Jaksic was incredibly powerful from the baseline and kept moving Ishizu around and overpowering her, yet Sachie continued to hit it back down the centre and wait for an error, which would often come from Jaksic. That, or a really strong winner. In the first set, Sachie hit barely any winners.
After that she seemed to step her game up more, serving well with good placement and mixing her game up more. She has a beautiful net game, when she chooses to use it, and some lovely touch shots and aesthetically, her groundstrokes were simply joyous, incredibly relaxed and effortless looking. Eventually, Jaksic then lost it, and Sachie raced to a 5/2? or so lead in the final set. But as soon as this happened, she went back into the mode she was in in the first set, hitting it down the centre and waiting for an error. Jaksic had a mini comeback but fortunately it wasn't enough.
I can't quite put my finger on it, but there is something really quirky about Sachie. Even when she was down, she appeared completely relaxed and laidback on the court, although she was incredibly pumped up for the big points, shouting come on. She also has a pretty cute hop she does before serving. :shrug:
So all in all, I saw potential and that she had some great tools, but she wasn't using them when needed. So I am hoping I caught her at an off day. Still, it was great to see her for a first time and I wish her luck with the rest of the tournament. She is also on the entry list for the 25k Woking here in the UK in two weeks which I'm probably attending, so hopefully I'll see a better side to her.
And I would say that if she wants to win, she needs to step up her game considerably. I left the match at one point and walked around the grounds and saw the last game of one of the Pliskova twins, who was simply on a different level to anyone else I saw today.