Just a short update on how the players mentioned in my last articles performed, before moving on to the main topic of this piece: the two matches that Kostyuk played and won (even if struggling a lot)… against herself.
Denisa Hindova has honourably lost against 16 seed Rybakina (6-2 7-5); I think she is a player that is worth to keep monitored. Johnson beat Pieri in 3 tight sets; seed n. 3 Wang surprisingly lost in third round; whilst seed 1 Masarova is still alive and kicking. Kostyuk, on whom I will focus shortly, is also still in the tournament, and interestingly, she is the highest seeded player (11) in her part of the board: so, she could be considered the favourite to play the finals (though in the quarter finals she will play against Liang, the Taipei girl who managed to beat the strong Chinese Wang: that could be a tough match).
I saw two matches – not entirely since I must also sleep – from Kostyuk: round two against Naho Sato (6-1 2-6 6-2) and round three against strong Jodie Burrage (6-7(5) 6-1 6-4); this is then the occasion to speak a bit more about Marta, born in June 2002 and currently ranking 17 in Junior ITF. Not bad, eh? As a preamble I specify that this is a hard piece to write since it is focused not on a young woman, but on a young girl, basically a kid; the following should be read by keeping in mind this aspect and taking in account that things may rapidly change (and improve) in real short time.
As we all know Marta is strong: real strong, and that’s not hard to guess, taking in account her age and ranking. Let’s go a bit in details on her game, then. She seems to be very tall and that’s her first weapon. She can consistently hit first serves between 160-165 km/h: basically as hard as Vinci (not that Vinci hits a hard first serve, but Kostyuk is nearly 20 years younger), or as hard as the second serve of Nadal (even if, of course, Kostyuk’s serve is flat). One can expect that in few years she will hit first serves at over 180 km/h, but I guess she will reach even higher speeds. Second serve can go as fast as 130 km/h – which is basically the same speed as the first serve of Juvan, as it was tracked in Wimbledon – and please remember that Juvan is two years older than Kostyuk.
In the two matches I followed, Marta did not benefit from a great percentage of first serves in (42% against Sato, 53% against Burrage), but she was, of course, able to win a lot of points when first serves landed in (over 80% against Sato, 70% against Burrage). From the base line she is exactly as one can expect: equally powerful with forehand and backhand (two-handed), being able to hit winners from both sides. Of course her game is very offensive: she always attacks and steps in the court on the opponent’s second serve, relying on her superior pace (even if she is usually a couple of years younger than the opponents). But Marta has also awesome defensive skills, which she showed in both matches. Against Burrage, especially, it happened that the British player had to hit 4 winners before scoring an actual point.
A feature I don’t like of Kostyuk’s game is that she always goes big, irrespective of the situation, especially when returning and, from the base-line, even if under pressure. She basically does not have variations in her game and relies mostly on the power of her shots. She never slices, if not in extreme defence situations. Of course this aspect, as every other of her game, can be improved a lot with experience: but let’s say her natural features seem to be a bit as such.
Her net play is not wonderful: Kostyuk’s hand is not exactly Navratilova’s. In the only two occasions I saw decent passing shots (not winners) played against her, even if she had a fairly comfortable volley to hit, she missed the court by one metre. Nevertheless I extremely appreciated the fact that the girl tries to go to the net, I would not say often, but at least sometimes. Fairly often she does that not as a result of a plan, but after having realised she had hit a good shot; but sometimes she follows to the net a planned attacking shot. Results are not always amazing, but time is on her side to improve. I think it is very important that she develops some net play in order to be able to find solutions different from super-power shots. Even if in the short term this may cost her some points and some matches, as she sometimes attacks when she should not or her volleys are not great, in the long term she will benefit from this attitude, which may add variety to her game. A feature which, from what I have seen, Potapova (a player with features similar to Kostuyk) lacks of, for instance: if boom-boom does not work out well, Anastasya may run out of ideas.
From time to time Kostyuk also tries drop shots, but 90% of them result to be completely wrong (often too high and long), but the same as above applies. Overall, I must say I am not a great fan of Kostyuk’s game: I love Roberta Vinci (and, of course Kaja Juvan as junior); thus I can’t love Marta’s game. Nevertheless it’s indeed a winning game, and I guess Marta’s main goal is not to please my eyes, but to win.
In my view the good and bad news for Marta is that her worse weakness and enemy is herself. By far. In both the matches I saw she overplayed (greatly) her opponent; nevertheless, both times she managed to get in troubles: against Sato she lost the second set 6-2 (after winning the first 6-1) whilst, against Burrage, she nearly lost the match, notwithstanding having dominated in each set.
Marta sometimes just loses her mind, and this can happen at any time, for no apparent reason. Here is a concrete example of what can happen when she plays: against Sato she managed to win the first set in 19 minutes, winning 100% of the points when first serve went in, double faulting once only. Then Sato held her serve and took a 1-0 lead in the second set. Kostyuk seemed to get really annoyed by the fact that her opponent was in such big lead (!) and in the following game she managed to double fault three times and to hit a ball far out, losing thus her serve and allowing her opponent to come back in the match. The second set continued as such, with Kostyuk making 7 double faults and winning only 9 points when returning, since she constantly hit whatever return at an impossible speed, but none of them hit the court. I was so pissed off with her that I skipped the third set.
The match against Burrage was more interesting, also due to the higher level of Marta’s opponent. I was truly amazed by the fact that basically Burrage was never able to enter in the match, at least in my view. When Kostyuk was in good mood, she dominated the struggles, when she was in bad mood, it was a collection of unforced errors. Anyway, the whole show was quite entertaining. I think Kostyuk played a bit better against Burrage than in her previous match, confirming anyway all the features shown against Sato: if she hit a valid first serve she was a killer; she was really aggressive, sometimes too aggressive, on the opponent’s second serve; from time to time she went for the net. She alternated winners to non-sense mistakes.
I promise: after these two days I will never say again the word “consistency” in relation to Marta Kostyuk’s game. Consistent are her results, since at 14 there’s no chance she can miss a quarter finals in any Grade A and she is so strong she does that by beating not only her opponents but also herself (an occupation which may be real tiring, by the way). I repeat: Marta is only 14, and we all know how much 14 year old girls can be annoying. She can only improve her personality, which currently seems to be a bit “unstable” sometimes (as we all were at that age plus, indeed, she has to deal with a huge amount of pressure). Even if she does not improve technically (and of course she will), but only mentally and finds more balance, things will become very painful for her opponents: when she is calm and focused, she becomes unstoppable; and if she starts to fight her opponents, instead of herself, there’s no chance, in my view, that this girl during next year (if not this year) will not become n. 1 junior.
If you ever read this, Marta: please calm down and accept you have an opponent at the other side of the net; if you do that, the future is all yours. Otherwise, you will achieve less than Ivanisevic. Not in the sense you won’t win Wimbledon, but in the sense that you will anyway never become as creative as he was; so there’s no reason to pursue that route.
Whilst I am finishing this piece Marta, is comfortably reaching the semi-finals (she won 6-3 6-1): this time I did not hear a single scream or complaint by her. I told you that things can change and improve real quickly!
Tommy Hemp
