Porceddu is the most important main course of Sardinia’s cuisine: it’s a baby pig, aged between 40 and 60 days, which is spit roasted (vertically, not horizontally, please, otherwise it loses all its liquids and becomes real dry) and it is tender and lovely to eat. I am pretty sure that Bianca Andreescu, Kaja Juvan and Olesya Pervushina, who competed in the 25ks ongoing in S.M. Pula (Sardinia) in weeks from 27 March to 2 April and from 3 to 10 April ate a lot of Porceddu during their stay. This article, though, focuses only on their tennis performances, more than on their diet. Before starting the resume, a brief note on Anastasya Potapova: following the recent win of the 25k in Curitiba her great moment seems to continue since, having been awarded with a wild card for the qualifications of the Miami Open, she managed to win the first round, beating a very good player as Maria Sakkari by 6-4 0-6 7-6(2). She then lost the following match by 6-3 6-1 against Maria Cepelova; nevertheless, another great achievement for the 15 year old Russian.
Let’s focus on the main topic of the article starting from Pervushina’s performances, since I think that there are signals showing that, after having faced a bad period, she is regaining her form. True that in both events Olesya lost at the second round, but I think her results in these two weeks cannot be seen as negative: first, in both tournaments she managed to qualify to the main draw, beating in the process some good players such as Ekaterine Gorgodze (currently 329 WTA). Moreover, in the first round of the main draw of the first tournament, Olesya managed to defeat by 7-6 6-4 the first seed and top 200 WTA Lina Gjorcheska. She then lost the following match 6-3 6-4 by Bianca Andreescu: a defeat which cannot be taken as a shame, though. As per the second tournament, in the first round Pervushina won in three sets against Garcia Perez (a top 300); she was then dismissed dismissed in a really tight match (6-3 3-6 6-7 was the final result) by Olivia Rogowska, ranked 229 WTA and a former (nearly) top 100. Rogowska reached then the semi-finals of the event. Considering that during the last 3 months Pervushina has lost in early rounds of 15ks by players ranked well below her, the fact that in Sardinia she managed to beat or at least compete against girls ranked even 150 spots higher than her is a good sign indeed.
As per Kaja Juvan, taking in account that these were the first two 25ks she competed in, she did not perform badly, but not even hyper-good. Kaja started greatly her 25ks adventures: benefitting of a junior entry to the main draw, in the first round she beat by 6-0 1-0 Ret. Myrtille Georges (228 WTA). I saw the match and the remarks I can make is that Georges seemed to be quite slow and unable to take the initiative by being aggressive when returning, hitting the ball short or missing the return when trying to attack her opponent. On the other side, I was surprised by the level of tennis Kaja showed; most of her returns bounced one meter from the baseline or were winners; she was always in the lead of the exchange and whenever her opponent hit a shot a bit shorter she was able to enter in the court and close the point. Even in the few occasions she was under pressure, Kaja was able to reverse the pace of the struggle by counterattacking herself or hitting a winner from a defensive situation. Kaja that day was unstoppable; by contrast, I must say that I didn’t notice any injury suffered by Georges: I believe she retired due to frustration. The following round was a hard one for me, since my beloved one played against my other beloved one, i.e. Martina di Giuseppe, a true specialist in being paired against the strongest teens one can find around. Kaja won the match 6-2 4-6 6-0 showing very good aggregate stats (in particular, she won nearly 70% of points with her serve). The following round she was dismissed by Bianca Andreescu by 6-4 6-0: again, no shame in this (just a bit for the bagel, maybe, but it happens).
In the second event, Kaja utilised a further junior entry, but, this time, she lost in the first round against Petra Martic, currently ranked over 600 but former top 50: this was Petra’s comeback to competitions following a stop of 9 months. The result of the match, which I managed to see, was 6-2 6-4 in favour of Martic and it was a match the young Slovenian played poorly: she was unusually faulty from the backline and also missed a couple of easy volleys which she generally would convert. Of course, I particularly focused on Kaja’s serve and I noticed (without putting particular effort in this) that there was basically no chance that, whenever she hit a valid first serve, Juvan was not involved in a tough struggle: she was always immediately attacked by Martic, whose returns were, in best cases, deep enough to start the point in no disadvantage. More often they bounced between Kaja’s feet or they were anyway real aggressive, so that Martic continuously managed to immediately take the control of the exchange. Curiously enough (but if someone knows Juvan’s stats, that’s not so unusual for her), it was sometimes more difficult for Martic to deal with Kaja’s second serve than with her first: Kaja hits the second with much more lift (as it appears also from her toss which is far more on her left side when she hits her second serve than her first), getting the ball to bounce higher and avoiding at least to be attacked; further, especially when serving from the left, she was able find external angles which were sometimes not easy to deal with for her opponent. Overall, Martic served much more consistently than Kaja, especially during the first set, in which she gained many direct points from her first serve, something which greatly released her from pressure to hold. Overall stats show that Juvan won 34% of points with first serve, 50% with the second; Martic’s figures are 61% with first serve, 47% with the second. I leave aside the stats of each set to cut it short, but no surprise if Juvan was able to hold her serve only 3 times out of 9. It’s also fair to say that Kaja was not the only player who found troubles against Martic, since the latter won the tournament, having beaten in the process, within others, strong Fernanda Pera in three tight sets and the second seed Viktoria Kamenskaya by 6-1 6-1.
As per Bianca Andreescu, she was the winner of the first of the two tournaments: no surprise in this, since she is too strong. She easily dismissed in the first round the mysterious Rumanian Virginia Tica, a girl who never wins more than two games per match but managed, nevertheless, to obtain two wild cards for the two events. In the second round she beat Pervushina without facing particular troubles and, even more easily, the Beloved-One (as per this match, note that in the first set, again, Juvan’s second serve stats were better than the first’s: as per Andreescu’s overall stats, she won 80% of points with her first serve, 57% with her second). In the semi-finals Bianca dismissed Katharina Hobgarski in straight sets, before being involved in a never-ending struggle against the American Bernarda Pera, which she won by 6-7(8) 6-2 7-6(8): the match lasted over 3 hours and a half and Andreescu won 131 points whilst her opponent won 127. As one could foresee, the stats of the two players are basically in line. With the 50 points gained by winning the event, Andreescu will enter next week in the top 200s – wow. Funny enough, the first round of the second S.M. Pula featured … Andreescu against Pera! This time the American won by 6-2 2-0 Ret: possibly, after a semifinal reached two weeks ago and the win achieved a few days before, Andreescu was real tired or was just fed up of eating Porceddu.
Unfortunately, no match of Bianca from the first event is available, so I will write a few notes on her style of play basing on the match she won against Martina Trevisan during the event played in S.M. Pula in the second last week of March. Andreescu Trevisan ended 6-3 6-3 in favour of the Canadian: Trevisan is not a real easy opponent to play against, since she always hits real deep and finds many lines. Her serve is decent and from the baseline she is a solid player, even if she misses a bit too many attacking shots. The following judgements on Andreescu’s game are based only on this match: I would need to see something more to fully assess her, but here we are.
Andreescu’s built is huge, she is very tall and thick. Notwithstanding her physical features I was impressed by her defensive skills since, in some occasions, even a neat striker as Trevisan had to hit 4 or 5 winners to eventually gain the point. After watching and watching Andreescu, I had the impression that not only she is decently fast but that most her game is based on playing in real advanced position: this starts to be evident from her receiving position, which is no more than one meter behind the baseline against her opponent first serve; when she receives a second serve, instead, she enters one meter in the court, before her split step, which takes her even in a further advanced spot. She tries to keep an advanced position during the whole exchange, even if under pressure, playing stick to the baseline, even at the price of hitting shorter or less powerful shots, or being forced to lift the ball in the air or of mishitting the ball; though, for sure, playing as such she keeps taking time off from her opponent. Such a feature of her game also allows her, from time to time, to find counterattacking winning shots in situations one would never expect she would attack, since only seldom Bianca is real far away from the baseline. Notwithstanding her apparent physical strength and the magnificent serving stats she often shows, I did not have the impression that her first serve is that huge; her second serve is sometimes a bit too flat and fairly often she double faults because her lift does not kick in and she hits the ball long. She can hit winners both with forehand and with her (double-handed) backhand, but I find her forehand to be a better shot; in particular quite often she hits a highly spinned tight cross court forehand which becomes a nightmare for opponents to deal with. Her back hand slice is quite good, but she rarely adopts such solution. Further, dropshots are not unknown to Bianca: this is a weapon she utilises if not really often, at least from time to time, and the results are overall very positive. It’s quite an event, instead, to see Andreescu going for the net. There are only two matches of Andreescu on the web (the other one is from the Junior Fed Cup): from the one I saw, I think the main feature of her style is an outstanding ability to play anticipated shots, something which itself puts the opponent under pressure. She is a player I need to watch again to fully assess, but for sure I found her game quite surprising: I expected from her built something much more based on power, instead I think she plays a game more based on covering the court in the best way possible.
