Photo taken from australianopen.com
This name, Dalayna Hewitt, jumped to my eyes when I was checking out what happened in the Grade 1 in Traralgon, as she won all her matches with ease and defeated the 5th seed Garland, before retiring in the semifinals. In the first round of the Australian Open, Hewitt has dismissed the 4th seed Carle: indeed she confirmed to be a dangerous player.
I have seen the match between the two and want to speak a bit about this girl. Indeed the heading of the article should suggest you of what kind of player we are speaking about, if you are familiar with the terminology utilised in this website: Dalayna is about 7.95 metres tall and extremely powerful. Her game relies on her massive serve: she can ace a lot and, in any case, whenever the ball lands in, the opponent is forced to an extremely defensive return; plus, Dalayna is really, really good in stepping into the court and hitting a winner. On her second serve things do not get much better for the opponent, as she hits also this real big. She double faults fairly frequently, but the risk pays off, as it is extremely difficult to attack her. As a result of all this, stats showed 7 aces, 57% of first serves in, 67% of points with first serve and 56% with second serve. She double-faulted 5 times: in light of the above figures, it’s perfectly fine.
Dalayna is not only good to crush a winner from inside the court, but from whatever position she finds herself in: she hits winners from two meters behind the baseline or from beside the sideline or from over the court or from underneath the same. Do not allow this girl the time to coordinate, settle and hit because the result is always the same: a winner or a shot which forces the opponent to passive defence.
As mentioned, Dalayna retired from a match just a few days ago; in the match against Carle her left ankle and thigh were bandaged: so, all that follows here below may be wrong or not entirely true, as she may have not fully recovered from her injury. Anyhow, the problem I found with this girl is that she is extremely slow in moving and, whenever she has not the time to perfectly settle for her shot, she misses (also because she tends to go big whatever she plays) or anyway she loses consistency, immediately leaving the initiative to the opponents. Things become even worse if she has to deal with short and low balls: if she has to advance fast and lift a ball, results can be devastating for her, and for the public too.
The above features dominated the whole match: it was the first time that I saw Carle playing and she passed most of her time 3 metres behind the baseline; but most frequently this was not her fault, since it was extremely hard to take off the initiative from Hewitt, especially when she was serving. Though, most of the times the rallies went over for more than 6 shots Carle was able to win the point, just by moving her opponent. Carle surprised me for being quite effective with her first serve, by finding great angles with it: she aced five times; though, her serve is not as effective as her opponent’s because her power is not overwhelming; all Carle’s central serves were countered fairly easily. Carle’s second serve is a bit soft, but most of the time she got away with it because Hewitt tended to miss the returns anyway, by trying to hit a direct winner.
The match was always tight, many games ended at advantages and no player really prevailed. The game was most of the time conducted by Hewitt who was both hitting winners or missing but, anyway, she forced Carle to be defensive. In the first set, there were a couple of breaks in favour of each player; Carle was leading in the final stages, but she made an awful mistake which I guess cost her the set and maybe the match. On 6-5 30-15 in her favour (I can’t recall who was serving) Hewitt was literally outside the court and she was walking back ready to play the next point. Carle had just to hit the backhand to the other part of the court and grab two set points, but she flooded the slice in the net. The set ended with the tie-break which Hewitt eventually won.
In the second set Carle tried to move her opponent a bit more and to slice more: it was a good strategy but her slices were a bit high and slow, whilst she would have needed lower trajectories to hurt Hewitt. Carle took a lead of 4-3 in the second set but Hewitt managed to equalise and, in the following (long) game, eventually Carle lost her serve and soon after the match.
As you may have understood the match was not particularly exciting: I paid more attention to Hewitt’s game than to Carle’s and my view is that Hewitt can be extremely dangerous, as her serve allows her to be in control of the game; though, Hewitt’s mobility issues (if not caused by the recent injuries) should be solved in order to allow the girl to become a top notch player.
I won’t watch Hewitt again because I must say her tennis does not interest to me, but this does not mean that she is not strong; on contrary, her weapons may allow her to play a good tournament (also by exploiting Carle’s quarter of draw).
