Indian Amanda

It seems that some people were expecting this piece, as the articles I wrote on this girl were read a lot during the last week; this time not by mistake, I didn’t mention her recent results since I was planning to write a new piece dedicated to her. Yes! the time has come to speak again about an “old friend” of this blog: Amanda Anisimova!!
The last time I wrote about Amanda was in September, when the young American won the Junior U.S. Open, ending as such her career on the junior circuit. Lets’ start from where we left: Amanda has ended 2017 in the top 200 WTA, so that she can currently be considered the strongest junior, together with Marta Kostyuk, Bianca Andreescu and Anastasia Potapova: but maybe Amanda and Marta have demonstrated, up to now, even a bit more than the other two girls. She obtained most of her ranking points between April and July: during those three months she won a 60k and reached the final in a further 60k and in an 80k. After the win of the Junior Slam, though, Amanda did not achieve great results: she played three further 80ks and two 125ks: in these tournaments she won only 3 matches, even if one of her wins was against 82 WTA Su-Wei Hsieh (the other one was against Irina Falconi). All Amanda’s losses, though, were against top 200 players: thus, they were matches against girls ranking about as high as Amanda in the pro circuit.
Things have swiftly changed last week, in the Oracle 125K held in Indian Wells. Amanda won 5 matches and the scores were impressive: overall, she lost only 1 set, and that happened in the second round of the quali, against Korean Jang (141 WTA): the final result was 6-3 3-6 6-0 in favour of the American. Amanda has then beaten Naomi Brady (128 WTA) by 6-1 6-1; Nicole Gibbs (118 WTA) by 6-4 6-0 and Caroline Dolehide (173 WTA) by 6-3 6-3. Eventually, the 16-year-old was beaten in the semifinal by Sara Errani, with the score of 4-6 2-6: many (strong) players are losing to the former 5th in the world, in this period. By this great result, Amanda has been awarded 126 points and she has reached her best ranking: 149 in the world; but that’s not all. Amanda was also awarded a wild card for the “big” Indian Wells tournament and, in the first round, she has confirmed her great shape, by beating 6-2 6-2 top 100 Pauline Parmantier.
Then the time for a big match came: in the second round she had to face 23 in the world Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova. Now, the Russian is playing real bad in this period as she won only 1 match in 2018 and she confirmed her difficulties also against Anisimova. Pavlyuchenkova took a 2-0 lead but immediately let Anisimova enter the match, losing her serve after having made three obnoxious unforced in a row. She continued to miss throughout the match, and she just didn’t try anything to change the situation. The Russian was suffering her opponent’s pace and depth; though,  she didn’t try any variation, not even with the serve, which Amanda handled without any problem throughout the match as she managed to break Pavlyuchenkova several times (I can’t be more precise on the figure as I find the stats on the tournament’s website to be incomprehensible, not showing the number of breakpoints each player had, but only the conversion rate. And I’m too lazy to count). As a result, Anisimova won the match by 6-4 6-1, in about an hour.
Amanda confirmed all the good impressions she left me with when I saw her playing in the Junior U.S. Open. I know I may exaggerate, but in my view this girl owns the best backhand in the world, junior or pro it’s the same: I find this shot to be the pivot of her game. Down the line, no troubles at all. But cross-court: she can finds angles that were discovered not even by Star Treck’s Enterprise, notwithstanding the explorations of the universe it carried out for a long while. On 6-4 3-1 in her favour of the young American, to counter a well-angled backhand by Pavlyuchenkova which sent her quite far away from the centre, Amanda played the tightest crosscourt I can now remember to have ever seen, which bounced not more than two metres after the net and close to the opposite lateral line: and from the clean and neat trajectory, I think that shot was fully intended. I melted and I fell in love. Again.
By contrast, I still don’t like as much Amanda’s forehand: in the early stages of the match she was broken because she kept missing it, and unforced errors came out from that side until the second part of the second set: at that stage, her game was flowing so well that she could have hit a winner also if she had played with a shovel. I have the impression that Amanda’s forehand is less natural and fluid than her backhand, and I think (but I well may be wrong on this) that with her backhand the girl can hit through the ball much better, as it seems to me that she hits more in front of her body than with her forehand.
Once again,  Amanda showed great nerves throughout the match. She kept cool in the first part of the match, when she was playing quite poorly; on 4-4 in the first set she saved a huge breakpoint through a stunning winner; she didn’t shake at all when she had to close the match: actually at that point she raised her level a lot, not missing a single shot anymore and hitting countless winners by adopting different solutions. More, I found Amanda quite quick on the court, in contrast with what I wrote in a former article of mine in which I slightly criticised her mobility. But this game showed me a further feature: Amanda’s hand is so tender. She seldom goes for the net, as I counted only 1 attempt (successful: she played 2 nice volleys); but she showed an outstanding ability with dropshots: she played 4 of them, one of which on the match point, and they were all perfectly executed and even well disguised. Even if she is tall, Amanda does not serve super-fast: at least in this match she preferred to serve in a more crafty way, ensuring herself a good 68% of first serves in and an outstanding 82% of points won (but maybe there was some cooperation of Pavlyuchenkova as per this second stat).
In conclusion, Amanda is not an “ova”, notwithstanding her surname. She owns a nice pace, but there’s more than that; she finds superb angles with her backhand and, also, she is not always predictable in where she would hit, especially when she hits a conclusive shot. Plus, she really owns a gifted hand, which adds variety to her game. The only problem I find (and which I found in other matches of her I saw before) is that it can take some time for her to find consistency with her forehand. On this occasion she was pardoned by her opponent, but in other matches she may be less lucky. Anyhow: in my view this girl is a candidate top 20, no surprise if she enters the top 10.