It was quite a bit of time I didn’t write anything; as one could immagine, this occurred not entirely due to my fault. I gained new inspiration while i was watching some matches of the U.S. Open: scrolling around courts, I suddenly found the mtch of a girl I sort of forgot about, even if she has been a usual guest on this website: Marta Kostyuk, a.k.a. Flagellum Dei.
It was a couple of years I didn’t see Marta playing, as she disappeared a bit from my radar, and I guess not only from my one. In 2018, Kostyuk qualified for the third round of the Australian Open, immediately after she reached the final in a 60k ITF tournament and played Fed Cup against Australia, beating in the process players as Peng, Golubic and Gavrilova (the latter in Fed Cup). Shortly after, Marta qualified to the second round of a WTA event and played an even match against Garcia, which eventually she lost by 5-7 at the third set. Marta was 16, when she reached a top ranking of about 115.
Afterwords Marta went through a difficult period; she lost too many times at first rounds and she slipped out from the top 200;even if she’s reached a couple more finals at 60k events, Marta did not really achieved results in line with the huge expectations she set in 2018 – except maybe for a third round in 2019 in Strasbourg open where, again, she lost against Garcia in three sets -. Before the U.S. Open started, Marta Kostyuk ranked around 150th spot, which is still very good, as she is only 18, but not as good as one would have thought.
Anyhow, two days ago, Marta has evenutally managed to gain a victory against a very good player, as she has beaten Anastasija Sevastova by 6-3 7-6 in the second round of the U.S. Open. In the first round, the young Ukrainian has beaten 6-1 6-2 Kasatkina, but this cannot be currently considered as a great achievement in later times, unfortunately. Marta eventually lost her following match against the first seed Osaka, but she’s anyway managed to take a set from the Japanese.
I have followed only the second set of both Marta’s matches against Sevastova and Osaka; and I found Marta a materially different player compared to two years ago. I was particularly surprised by the fact that – in particular in the set I saw against Sevastova – Marta played with a lot of margin: both her baseline shots, which used to be extremely flat, were hit with more spin, especially the forehand; the backhand is no more “Connors style” as it used to be. The backhand still becomes real flat at times, in particular when Marta loses her temper: in such occations she still manages to flood in the net three or four shots in a row. I suppose that this remaining issue also derives from the young age of Marta, and I am quite sure that she will be able to overcome this limit with more experience.
As per the rest: Marta has become even more powerful: she serves hard, hits everything hard, misses quite a lot but, as said, the gain of extra margin through increasing rotation has made her a much more competitive player than before. More, Marta is able to play some netgame and she has more solutions than many other players on the tour: this appeared many times during her junior career and it was confirmed again in her matches against Sevastova and Osaka. Marta is not only a matter of hitting big.
I believe Marta has strenghtened a lot her tennis since two years ago and i foresee her to enter the top 50 real fast.
