Let’s start by updating the war bulletin I have carried out some days ago: Wang (Xin Yu, I mean) had her thigh bandaged; Vismane her knee; Burel seems to have something keeping her ankle safe, Liang also had her rib bandaged. The thigh bandage seems to be the most fashionable item, after it was shown by Cocciaretto a few days ago: it’s a well known fact that Italians lead in fashion.
So, Cocciaretto lost against Liang in the tiebreak of the third set after having missed two match points, unfortunately for her and luckily for her opponent.[1]
The other semi-final featured Clara Burel vs. Xinyu Wang, i.e. the first seed of the tournament. I wanted to see again Clara and try to understand more about her game: I was quite sure she would have shown much more consistency than she did against Hewitt. I found out that Burel is actually very enjoyable to see, if she plays well.
Clara is very small, and in the first set she suffered Wang’s first serve a lot: the Chinese placed 70% of first serves in and won 80% of the relevant points: quite understandingly, Burel faced troubles, as Wang was serving each time between 170 and 180 km/h. Wang was thus unstoppable on her service games, while Burel, not being powerful as the Chinese, was constantly under attack on her serve and, being a bit too faulty from the baseline, she was broken twice. Clara lost the first set by 6-2 in less than half an hour. Though, it was evident that the set was mostly decided by the Chinese efficient serve; Burel, besides missing a bit too much, played fine tennis in the few rallies the Chinese allowed her to enter into and, anyway, Clara never allowed herself any “meaningless” mistakes as she did against Hewitt.
In the second set, the serve of the Chinese stopped working and the two began playing tennis also on her service games. At this stage, the difference between the two emerged.
Burel started using more rotations and moved the ball very well: a feature of her game is that she can find angles without going each time for a sideline; thus, she creates troubles to her opponent without taking too much risk. A further feature is that the small French can play winners by hitting quite slow shots, as she can place the ball wherever she wants. In any case, even if being small, when she needs it, Burel can generate some pace, both with baseline shots and her serve, which she is able to hit at a decent speed (around 165 km/h). Also in this match she showed a few winning forehands on the run, a kind of shot I already appreciated from her; plus, one more attribute of Clara I like is her ability to handle easy (or not so easy) balls: those low and short balls that many young players flood into the net or hit long, she can manufacture them very well, controlling the shot, being able to swiftly lift the ball and to place it neatly.
Clara’s tennis is of course sometimes is a bit light: her second serves seldom are faster than 120 km/h and also from the baseline she may find aa few troubles to counter fast balls, as it happened during the first set against Wang and also against Hewitt, the few times the latter’s shots went in. Though, Clara has this peculiar feature of being able to place the ball in the right spot; she may not look so fancy sometimes, no big speeds, no volleys, no drop shots, but she wins the points reducing risks at minimum, which makes her a dangerous player.
As per Wang, I didn’t like her too much. Until her serve worked well, all went fine: Burel in defence, easy balls to deal with and winners; on Burel serve she could play without pressure and attacked her freely, profiting from the gap of power between the two. Though, when in the second set, the Chinese’s serve got stuck, whilst Burel showed that one can play high level tennis without hitting the ball at extreme speeds and going for the line on each shot, Wang was not able to do the same. As the rallies got longer and Burel had the opportunity to play a bit more the kind of game she likes, Wang couldn’t keep the pace: it was an unforced error after another: being no more supported by her serve, the balls she had to counter were not as easy as before. Wang lost confidence and started to hit even harder, until the unforced errors became countless.
Wang took a 1-0 lead in the second set, then she lost 12 games in a row and, of course, the match. She did not manage to sort out something different from the scheme big serve, big second shot, big return; this game can be effective if everything is flawless, but if something stops working, troubles show up and, missing any alternative, they become unsolvable.
I’ve seen Clara Burel twice now, both times against big hitters; I would be curious to watch her against a player with a style more similar to her own one and who may not concede as many free points as Hewitt and Wang did. This will happen in few minutes’ time, in the final she will play against Liang.
[1] This latter statement is indeed a great intuition.
