Day 2, second evasion from my office. Or better, actually I went to the club at 9 to see just a set of whatever match, with the plan to arrive at the office at a sort of decent time (I succeeded, actually). During last night it rained a lot, but even if it has been real cloudy all the day long, the weather today has held and the matches progressed as scheduled (there were only a few drops sometimes, I don’t know if there have been any interruptions). Anyway, as a result of nasty weather, today’s courts were real heavy and the air very thick, so that balls didn’t move: conditions were quite difficult for players who prefer fast surfaces.
It was only by chance (absolutely!) that I followed the first set of the match scheduled on court 7, where, by chance, Varvara Gracheva (nicknamed Vaia by her coach) was playing against American Gabriella Price, a girl born in 2003 who last January won a Grade 1 and at the end of March reached the semifinals in the Easter Bowl, having beaten in the third round my Elli Mandlik with the brutal score of 6-2 6-1; this young girl already owns a noticeable ranking of 44. Now, court 7 is the only one which does not have a lateral access, so to follow the match one must go on at the top of the stand of the central court and turn 180° (not 360°, otherwise you would face the central court again): I don’t like watching matches from a high perspective, but the advantage of following from there is that one also has good visibility on court 8, where Lopapetskaya, the girl spotted to me by Cataflic in a comment to this article, was playing against second seed Osorio Serrano: so, from time to time, I was able to give a glim to the Ukrainian too.
I must say that my plan was partially ruined by today’s Vaia’s poor performance (don’t be misled by the final score of 6-3 6-2 in her favour): I don’t know if the slow conditions affected her or if she just had a bad day, but today my Russian girl was hitting her forehand virtually everywhere; her backhand, instead, was much more solid. Young Gabriella didn’t really have to do anything, but for capitalising on Gracheva’s unforced: I can’t even try to assess how Gabriella plays as it was evident (and fully justified, in light of the age gap between her and the opponent and also the different build of the two) that she couldn’t really handle Gracheva’s pace; though, the latter was missing every third shot and, as a consequence, until 3-3, Gracheva has never conceded a break ball, but she was at least two times 15-30 down, whilst Price was able to defend her serve quite comfortably. The break for Gracheva occurred on 4-3 in her favour as she managed to win a couple of points at the net; Vaja easily held the following service game and secured the first set: at such point I left. As said, the Russian managed to win the second set for 6-2 and qualified for the second round, in which she is scheduled to play against Carle: it won’t be simple for my favourite one, especially if the courts will be as slow as today.
As I was a bit worried for Gracheva’s poor performance, I didn’t manage to focus too much on Lopapetskaya: though, from what I saw, she is a huge striker, as her older compatriot Kostyuk, whom she resembles also physically (I mean both are tall, slim but not skinny, athletic and blonde – after this detailed description every reader will possibly want to marry Lopapetskaya (or Kostyuk)), but compared to Marta, Lopapetskaya completely avoids any attempt to play some net game. In any case, Serrano, being not a huge hitter and even if older than the Ukrainian, suffered her opponent’s aggressive baseline game: she was able to place some nice drop shots, which she is indeed able to execute well, but not much more than this. It was the Ukrainian who appeared to lead most of the first set’s rallies and she secured, if I am not wrong, an advantage of two breaks, eventually managing to win the first set by 6-4. The first set of the two matches ended basically at the same time, so I didn’t see what happened in the second set of Lopapetskaya’s match, which she quickly lost by 6-1; I followed on the live scores the last phases of the third set, which the Columbian eventually won by 6-4, not before, though, being forced to save 4 break points on 5-4 in her favour. I guess our reader Cataflix was right: this Lopapetskaya deserves to be followed closely: she was born in 2003, has already won a couple of Grades 3 and has been today very close to defeat the second seed in the Italian Open, in playing conditions that, having seen her style, I think advantaged Osorio.
Let’s give now a glim to today’s other results. Kung, a qualifier highlighted to me by Colette Lewis, is going very well, as she easily went through the quali and the first round; Italian seeded Cocciaretto dropped a set (but won the third by 6-0) and is through to the third round, as Elè Molinaro and Lulu Sun: the Swiss seed dismissed American player Kacie Harvey. Also the other Italian Rossi is through to the second round, having beaten Krupenina, and Carle is too, having easily dismissed my friend Daniella Dimitrova (I was not surprised by this result). Tauson gave a further demonstration of her strength, leaving four games overall to the Georgian Makatsaria: she qualified to the third round. I guess that the only today’s real upset in girls’ event was the loss of Naho Sato, against Ukrainian Dema (how many Ukrainian competitive players are there around, currently??).
The Boys’ event which was instead full of surprises, and I am happy to say that Italians were protagonists in all of them. In particular, Jannick Sinner, a player I like and I saw last year in a Grade 2, has beaten American 6th seed Tristan Boyer by 6-0 6-2 (I assume Boyer was not in his best day) and he already reached the third round; Cobolli has beaten “His Majesty” Skatov by 7-5 6-0 and also Zeppieri, Arnaboldi and Musetti are through to the second turn. Wow!! Santa Croce’s winner Cannon Kingsley proved to be a top level player, as he offered great resilience to the second seed Tseng: the final score was 4-6 7-6(2) 6-1 in favour of the Taipei player, whilst it was easy for the first seed Baez to dispose of Brazilian Ferreira, winning by 6-2 6-0.
