[Caralenko]

Omfggggg.

[DS.Fan.]

She won!!!!!OMG...cant believe my eyes!!!so so so happy!!!!!!

[osseous]

Sooooo happy!

[swim4life227]

Keep building on this Safina, and you'll have a great clay season!

[CareerSlamPova]

Order of Play-Day 7,15th March,2011.

STADIUM 1 start 11:00 am
[31] E Gulbis (LAT) vs [3] N Djokovic (SRB) - ATP
Not Before 1:00 PM
[15] M Bartoli (FRA) vs [2] K Clijsters (BEL) - WTA
[29] J Chela (ARG) vs [2] R Federer (SUI) - ATP
[1] C Wozniacki (DEN) vs [22] A Kleybanova (RUS) - WTA
Not Before 7:00 PM
[8] A Roddick (USA) vs [30] J Isner (USA) - ATP
Not Before 8:30 PM
Dinara Safina (RUS) vs [16] Maria Sharapova (RUS) - WTA

[CareerSlamPova]

Another Stadium 1 Night Session.
What a match set,gosh I am stuck in a dilemma. :/
My favorite players will battle for a place in QFs.
May the best win .
The good thing,at least one of them will be in the QFs.

[osseous]

Davai Dinara!

[DS.Fan.]

Davai Dinara!!!!I will be happy no matter u win or lose cos Finally we see the hope!!!U improve a lot!

[CareerSlamPova]

Dinara on playing Maria-
"She's also coming back from injury. She's a little bit higher ranked than me. Just 100 spots."

Oh Dinara!

[CareerSlamPova]

Btw,Dinara won her Rd 2 and Rd 3 matches with an exactly same score.
76(2) 64.

[bruce goose]

What's most surprising to me is the serving;Dinara apparently only faced 1 BP the 1st set,and that's SUPERB compared to where she was before

[Pavstry.]

Originally Posted by bruce goose

What's most surprising to me is the serving;Dinara apparently only faced 1 BP the 1st set,and that's SUPERB compared to where she was before

uh, 16DF is good serving now?
hope ES shows this afternoon, Sam should have played really-really bad if she couldn't win a set. i mean more than 20% of her points came from Dinara's DF. THATS A LOT.
whatever, i'm happy. Hoping she can make next match competitive too.

[HowardH]

Originally Posted by tejmeglekvár

uh, 16DF is good serving now?
hope ES shows this afternoon, Sam should have played really-really bad if she couldn't win a set. i mean more than 20% of her points came from Dinara's DF. THATS A LOT.
whatever, i'm happy. Hoping she can make next match competitive too.

I agree with this. Without seeing the match, it's hard to conclude Dinara served well- in fact, with 16 DF, we'd have to conclude she served badly. I'd also guess Sam played poorly. But Dinara is probably rallying and returning better than before.

If we look at the stats to see what was happening on second serve, we can see she hit 32 second serves. Of those 32 second serves, she missed 16, exactly half of them , for a 50% success ratio. However, of the 16 second serves she landed, she won 12 of those points. Still, that means her second serve percentage was actually lower than her first serve percentage- she got 64% of first serves in but only 50% of second serves in. This is very concerning and makes one think she was not handling the pressure of second serves very well at all. Despite the other good things this is pretty bad. Every time she was going to hit a second serve you knew she had a 50% chance of doublefaulting. It's amazing to be able to win a match like that, against quality opposition.

There are good signs for sure though. But with 16DF it's a minor miracle that she was only broken 3 times. That must mean she's hitting the ball better- off the ground anyway. I would be interested to see exactly what Sam was doing with her serve. Dinara did very well on Sam's first serve, reducing her to only winning 55% of first serve points. That's almost the same as Sam's stats on the second serve. Did Sam get in a rut of repeatedly hitting the same kick serve, which helped Dina get a rhythm on the return? Dina is tall and strong so by definition the kick serve to the bh is less effective against her. Sam could be a truly fearsome server if she mixed in more flat and slice serves on the first serve, as well as body serves, instead of going for the kick to the bh all day long. To be reduced to winning 55% only on her first serve is a disaster for her and one of the key stats that Dina won in this match.

Another thing to note: Dinara won 67% of points when she actually got the second serve in, and she had almost identical stats when she got the first serve in- 68% won.

From these stats we can also conclude that her first serve was not actually giving her an advantage compared to her second serve. Overall, it seems like Dinara won despite of her serve, rather than because of her serve. That's okay though, for her. Her serve was never that good, and she always relied on her groundies much more. So the core of her game is beginning to function.

Dina always had serve problems, so the fact that they remain is not necessarily as big a problem as it is for other players. But having only a 50-50 chance of the second serve going in is a little too much. Par for Dinara at this stage is probably what she produced against Dani- 8DF out of 28 second serves, or having about a 30% chance of doublefaulting on any given second serve. Pretty bad for most pros, but okay for Dinara (at least for the next few months).

[HowardH]

The indication I'm getting from comments around the board is that this was not a high quality match. Sam's rallying was particularly abysmal, apparently. But it seems at least Dina was hitting heavier than before.

I would like to see it for myself though. Different people see matches differently.

[redsonja]

I've heard differing things about Dinara's performance, but everyone seems to have thought Sam absolutely sucked. Still an amazing win for Dinara, but if you're looking for a way she could possibly serve 16 double faults in 2 sets and only get broken three times, I think you need look no farther than her opponent's quality of play.

Or lack thereof.