Claire Liu is the only junior girl, among those who attempted the qualifications, who managed to qualify to the main draw of the U.S. Open, confirming once again the great period of form she is experiencing. In the qualification rounds, Liu easily dismissed Caroline Dolehide (161 WTA), then beat in three tight sets the Bulgarian Sesil Karatantcheva (226) and finally gained her place in the main draw by easily defeating the Russian Victoria Kamenskaya (191 WTA). Indeed the draw could have been more challenging for Liu. In any case, she achieved a great result; and she did that through convincing scores (Claire lost overall 7 games in the first and the third match; as said, the match against Karatancheva was, instead, very tight).
I then decided to watch the 1st round of the main draw, in which Liu was opposed to the Chinese Ying-Ying Duan, currently ranked 92 WTA and showing a best ranking of 60, gained last April. During the last 5 years of her career, Duan always ended each of her seasons between the 170th and the 100th spot: thus, she is not Serena Williams, but not even a tourist passing by; this is why I think she is a perfect opponent against whom to carry out an assessment of a junior player.
This was the second match of Claire Liu I have watched, the first one being the final of the Roland Garros, which she lost against Whitney Osuigwe. I should have written a further article on that match, but I never did: had I done so, I would have stated that in the final Liu did not 100% impress me: in particular, I had the impression that the whole match was led by Osuigwe, who hit winners and made mistakes but, in any case, was always in control of the game.
To be honest, I had the exact same impression yesterday; again, Liu has not impressed me as other junior players I saw did. In particular, very seldom I saw Claire going for a winner or anyway trying to be on top of the struggles; she was most of times in defence, and I saw no particular ability of her to hit a decisive shot. All the above demonstrates that I am still not able to fully understand tennis, because if this girl had no particular qualities, she could not have qualified so easily to a Grand slam’s main draw and she could not have achieved the great results I mentioned in my last article. This is why her nickname will be the “Misunderstood One”.
M.U.O. (short form) is quite small; according to official stats, she is 6.4 feet tall. She hits her first serve at around 100 mph, owns a spinned forehand and a doublehanded backhand: I remember that in R.G. final she missed many, many overheads; during this match I have never seen her at the net; nevertheless, I remember her hitting a very gracious drop shot, that followed a nice attack.
The start of the match was harsh for Liu, since Duan, profiting from her bigger frame, was very aggressive on Liu’s serve and showed a higher pace in her shots and a faster ball. The Chinese managed to immediately break her young opponent and take a 2-0 lead. By contrast, Duan was serving effectively and held quite comfortably; nevertheless she was pretty faulty, also missing easy shots: a couple of attempts of chops from her were terrifying, actually, and whenever she had to deal with a short ball by Liu, results were quite catastrophic. Thus, even if Duan managed to keep her advantage, she never achieved a safe lead. Basically, the match started and continued as such: Duan was taking control of each point, but Liu defended toughly and, whenever the young American was able to prolong the exchange to more than 5 or 6 shots, she always managed to grab the point, since her opponent eventually missed. Eventually, M.U.O managed to break back her opponent and equalize to 3-3; nevertheless, she was immediately broken at 0 but, again, Liu managed to break back and, immediately after, to hold and take a 5-4 lead. Notwithstanding being Liu for the first time on the lead, nothing changed in the development of the match: Duan continued to lead the operations and to lose any point she could not close in the first few shots; Liu defended and defended and only seldom went for a winner. On 6-5 in her favour, Liu was very unlucky since, in the context of a tight game, one beautiful backhand from her ended out just an inch and secured to the Chinese the opportunity to play a tie-break, which was really tight and was eventually won by the Duan by 10-8. If I correctly remember, Liu had not had any set points during the tie-break.
Duan started the second set much more relaxed and focused than before and the many mistakes which characterized her first set vanished, but the winners were still there: in a short time she secured a 3-0 lead with a break. Again, though, the Chinese was not able to gain a decisive lead and again started to miss a lot more than she should have done. The second set, thus, was basically going on the line of the first one, with Duan keeping the initiative and alternating winners to unforced and Liu being more on the defensive side. I must admit that on 4-2 I got fairly bored and turned my attention to another court, convinced that the Chinese’s superior experience would have allowed her to close the match quite comfortably. I was wrong: just to make sure that the match was over, I switched to court 10 again, where another tie-break between the two was about to start: Duan took a lead of 3-2 when Liu missed an easy attack; on this occasion, Duan was more solid than during the rest of the match and was able to win 7-3, not conceding anything more to her younger opponent.
As her nickname reveals, I do not enjoy a lot watching M.U.O. but, as said, this may well be a problem of mine and not of hers; and M.U.O.’s results confirm this. I am curious to find out if, following this great result on the Pro Tour and having reached the first spot on the Junior Tour, M.U.O. will play any further junior event.
