This is becoming a monographic course on Amanda Anisimova, I know. I’m not doing this on purpose; just, again, her semi-final against Arango was the girl’s match which was broadcasted, and here we are commenting on Amanda for a further time. Plus, since she grabbed the final of the U.S. Open, I guess all this attention on her is well deserved.
I particularly enjoyed the match against Emiliana Arango (i.e. this time I was not pissed off), also because, being it played on the Grand Stand, it was, this time, commented and I found especially one of the commentators to be very competent: he let me understand features of Amanda’s game that I did not catch before, when watching her previous matches without any “guidance”.
Before focusing on the semifinal, though, let’s speak for a moment on Amanda’s opponent, i.e. Emiliana Arango. She was borne in 2000 and currently ranks 27th; honestly, I was a bit surprised by her super performance in this tournament; to reach the finals she had to get through a couple of severe tests, such as Elysia Bolton and the young and emerging Russian Alyna Charaeva. It was the first time I saw Arango and she is an unusual kind of player, since she lacks of big shots: she mainly plays trying to break her opponent rhythm, changing rotations and variating her shots. She serves with a half swing but, from time to time, she can hit big, over 100 mph; other times, she prefer to hit less aggressively, at about 80. It was quite interesting to see how Anisimova would react to this kind of opponent, so different from Danilovic and, at the beginning, Anisimova found herself in quite a bit of troubles: she couldn’t find her pace and she started to miss every shot, one after the other, since she was not really able to deal with the variety of balls she was receiving. She was broken immediately and Arango went on the lead by 3-1; nevertheless, Anisimova managed to stay in the set, since she held her serve and reached 3-2: at this stage, Anisimova’s stats were obnoxious, showing something like 13 unforced errors and 1 winner; as also highlighted by the commentators, this was the main sin of Arango: if an opponent shows such bad stats, to take a double break lead becomes a moral duty. Finally, Arango was reached on 3-3 as, slowly, Amanda found her way into the match and started to convert mistakes in winners; shortly after, Anisimova took a 5-3 lead but, again, she suddenly lost her serve at 0. Anisimova was anyway able to win the first set by 6-4. In the second set, Arango tried to change a bit her strategy and became more offensive; though, pace is something Anisimova is comfortable with and, after a few points she took to adjust, Anisimova was able to raise her level even more. The final score was 6-4 6-1 in favour of the American, who managed to win a first set which she played poorly and to dominate the second set.
I would like to report some observations on Amanda’s game made by the commentators of the match: 1) especially at the beginning of the match, when Amanda was missing everything, they questioned her forehand, finding the shot not completely free, and they pointed out that this was the reason why she often flooded the forehand in the net. Also in my view, as I mentioned in a previous article, Amanda’s best shot is the backhand; though I don’t fully agree on the analysis of her forehand, in particular because I knew from previous matches that, differently from yesterday, it’s quite usual for Anisimova to miss her forehand hitting it long. In the second half of the match, when Anisimova found her rhythm, everybody was in agreement that her forehand may not look as good, but indeed she can hit rockets with it and it is an effective shot. 2) Amanda finds troubles in playing high balls, especially with her forehand. This was something I didn’t notice in her previous matches and, yes, when it was pointed out, I also realised this; 3) Amanda has to improve her movement; this was made clear when the girl had to recover a crosscourt forehand of her opponent and it took her three steps to stop after having hit her shot; she thus lacks, in commentators’ view, a bit of strength in her legs. It was also pointed out that she will never become as fast as Bolt, but she can anyway improve in intensity with her feet; 4) a commentator was happy to notice that, when playing badly, Amanda kept cool and didn’t became temperamental; the other guy ironically asked “you would have preferred to see her smashing racquets, on 3-2?”. Well, that was exactly the reason I was so pissed off by Olga Danilovic who, in the quarter-finals, immediately lost her mind when things started to go less well for her and didn’t even try to figure out what she could do to react. By contrast, Amanda also in that match, when in troubles, kept control of herself and managed to get thing moving in the direction she wanted. She seems to be cool blooded.
Of course commentators pointed out the above weak spots starting from the assumption that the girl is a top 200 player at 16, i.e. they acknowledged she is very strong; they just wanted to highlight the areas in which, in their view, Amanda should improve to step to an even higher level.
In the finals Amanda will play against… guess who? Our friend Cori Gauff (!) who managed to beat Maria Lourdes Carle by 7-5 6-0 in the semi-finals and reached, thus, her first Grand Slam final. At 13 year old. Let’s be clear: Cori was lucky enough with her draw, because she has found (and beat) only one top notch player in the tournament, i.e. Carson Branstine (and, to be honest – and please do not get offended by this personal judgement-, I would prefer to play against Branstine than against Kostyuk, Swiatek, Juvan, Lee and so on). Carle was the second well know opponent, and the second top 50 player, Gauff have played against in her way through, up to now. But, again: Cori Gauff is only 13 and what she is achieved is just amazing.
Of course Anisimova is the favourite to win the trophy but, maybe also because of the tension she is feeling– she clarified in the post-match interview she does really want to win this trophy (ok, you could have guessed that by your own)-, in both matches against Danilovic and against Arango, Anisimova suffered from a really slow start: If this happens again and Gauff can profit from it, maybe she can, at least, make Anisimova face some troubles.
One more info: the doubles finals will feature Kostyuk and Danilovic vs. Boskovic and Wang. The formers are hot favourite in my view and, if they win, for both of them this will be their second grand slam title: Kostyuk has already won this year’s singles Australian Open, whilst Danilovic, paired with the Beloved Juvan, has won last Wimbledon’s double’s tournament.
I want to wrap this up by noticing that there is a reader who is frantically searching “Cori Gauff Anisimova”: I want to apologise, in particular with him/her, because this evening I am not able to watch the final; I will anyway watch it tomorrow evening or Tuesday evening and write a piece on it (hopefully) asap: I am very curios myself to see the how Gauff will perform against one of the strongest juniors.
