On Marta Kostyuk again!! We can’t get rid of her, can we? The tournament in Stuttgart was her debut in a WTA event and of course she was able to gain the main draw; she did that by beating in the last round of the qualifications Alizet Cornet: the final result was 4-6 6-3 6-2 in favour of the young Ukrainian. In the first round Flagellum Dei beat the German Antonia Lottner, who ranks basically the same as Marta, with the difference that Marta achieved her ranking by playing about 10 tournaments overall as a pro, whilst Lottner has played on the pro tour since 2011. In my view, Marta was the favourite of the match, as she demonstrated. The final score was 6-4 6-1 in favour of the Ukrainian. Marta had a great start, taking a 3-0 lead and had a couple of chances to further extend her advantage to 4-0 and then to 4-1. She missed a couple of easy winners, as she twice tried (and failed) to wrong-foot her opponent. Lottner managed thus to break back and soon after to equalize. Both players were playing quite well: the German was succeeding in attacking Marta’s second serve, but the young Ukrainian won basically all the rallies exceeding three shots, as she was able to hit a winner against every ball bouncing shorter than one metre from the baseline. On 4-4 Marta gained a decisive break and Lottner’s day ended as such: she started to hit more unforced, whilst Kostyuk kept a high level. Feeling safer on her service games, as fewer serves of hers produced a winner by her opponent, Kostyuk took a 5-0 lead in the second set and eventually won by 6-1.
Then the time came for Marta to play the second match of her career against a top ten (the first one was against her compatriot Svitolina in the last Australian Open), i.e. Caroline Garcia. The first set lasted about 20 minutes. Garcia was unplayable on her service games as she hit 71% of valid first serves and had no problem to close each rally in two shots. Instead, Marta’s first serves were really shaky, as she hit far less than 50% of them in (winning about 30% of points); plus, Garcia was very aggressive in returning and very precise too: I counted the first unforced by the French on 4-0 in her favour. When the score was 5-0, Kostyuk had won 5 points overall, one per game; she then asked for a coaching and had a chat with her mother and coach: or Marta uses to speak to her mother covering her face under a towel, or she was definitely crying. The first set ended 6-1 in favour of Garcia, who just didn’t let her young opponent even try to play some tennis and profited extremely well from Marta’s poor performance in serving.
The second set started with Kostyuk acing twice and taking the lead; though, Garcia was still unplayable on her serve and immediately equalized. On 1-1 Kostyuk again served out most of her first serves and had to face a break point that, in light of the swing of the match, smelled like a mini match point. Marta was classy and a bit lucky in defending against Garcias highly spinned forehands and in finding a backhand winner which hit the baseline. In the following game there was the unexpected twist: for the first time Marta was able to return effectively the French’s first serves, gain control of the rallies and play her offensive game: she broke her opponent notwithstanding being down by 0-30. From now on the match was different; Garcia continued to play well, maybe missing a few shots more than in the first set, especially when returning Kostyuk’s second serves (but if Garcia’s level was that shown in the first set she would have won 10 Slams by now…). Marta, instead, increased her first serve percentages and, feeling a bit less pressure also on her second serve, she was able to keep being offensive: the girl started to play her serve-winner game, hitting winners also when countering good and fairly deep shots from Garcia. On 4-2 Marta was lucky to save a break point, as Garcia played a violent closing shot which bounced between her opponent’s feet: Marta just opposed the racket, but the result was a tricky passing shot that Garcia couldn’t manage well enough, leaving an easy winner to the Ukrainian. The young girl was immediately after very good in saving two further break points with two good serves (mental toughness!!); she eventually held her serve and won the second set by 6-3.
The third set was played well by both players, without outstanding peaks: it became a bit boring actually, as there were a few mistakes from both sides, both girls served well and managed to keep control of their service games fairly easily. There were no break points till 6-5 for Garcia, which is a very unusual pattern in girls’ tennis; the French exploited the first break point in her favour, which was actually also a match point and eventually won.
My impression on Marta no more than 6 months ago was that she hit her backhand a bit too flat, which made her flood the ball into the net or hit it long a bit too often. From what I saw in the matches against Garica and Lottner, this problem (if ever existed) is no more there. I think that Marta now is equally good from both sides and close to perfection in her baseline game. In my view, she only needs to find more consistency on both her first and second serve, as sometimes she misses too many first serves and she seems to be fairly easily attackable on the second ball (at least by a very good/top player). I’m fairly confident that she will solve also these problems since, when she gets a good flow, especially on her first serve, Marta becomes really effective with it. This is the only weak point I can currently notice in her game: she can even play demi-volleys from the baseline (as Federer does), as shown twice against Garcia. She is becoming perfect and boring to watch. Marta has become 100% a pro and she is “too good”, whilst I like talented but messy juniors; I find them more fun to watch. Marta was as such, one year ago.
