I mean… I… I just can’t do it…
It has been one year and a half that I’ve been writing on this magazine now, and I’ve seen quite a lot of junior tennis in this whole time, including bad tennis. I’ve even gone to the qualifications of a weak Grade 2 and, I tell you, you can appreciate quite a low level in such occasions.
But I’ve never seen something as Hewitt vs. Burel, not at all: in the quarterfinals of a junior slam!! It just can’t be real!! It was so weird that when the match ended I went back to the start (the first four games rewarded me with the highest “satisfaction”) because I thought: no, come on, they can’t have played as badly, maybe I am tired after all these nights passed to watch the matches and to write… But no. I was right, they were THAT bad!!!
I still can’t understand: this is a quarter-final of a slam; Hewitt made the semifinals in Traralgon, having beaten Garland; Burel ranks 33, her too, she has beaten Garland, and Bolton too… and she reached the final of Eddie Herr having beaten Carle! Just, come on…
Description of some peaks: in the first game, Burel served a slow and central second serve. Hewitt returned slowish, but neet along the line. Burel just lifts the ball high and deep; also Hewitt tried to play a high ball in return, but she hits an awfully short shot that bounces just after the net; Burel misses the following shot by 2 metres. More: sliced crosscourt drop-shot by Burel… that bounces on the service line. Countered by a cross-court drop shot by Hewitt… that bounces on the service line. The court of course now is open for Burel… she hits out. No. At least for the first half of the first set Burel many times served so slow, as if her opponent was a 5-year-old kid; so slow that by the time the kid would have returned her serve, he would have reached his puberty. Hewitt, each and every time, returned one metre long. The best serve from Burel was, though, in the second set, when she hit the ball just long of the service line. Her own one. That shot, I watched it again for three times and I was laughing loud enough to wake up my wife, who has to get up in three hour time to catch a train, and who shouted me I was an idiot. Which I am, of course. But, I tell you, if you are curious and watch the match on Youtube, don’t go to look immediately for that serve; to fully appreciate it, you have to see it in an appropriate mood, having watched all the previous part of the match. One last peak: serve by Burel, normal; Hewitt returns quite short and badly and her ball bounces on the “T” of the serve. Incomprehensibly, Burel sets up for her own shot awfully late and she has to play a defensive slice to counter her opponent’s weak shot (??); Hewitt ends in a classy way, by hitting the backhand 1 meter long.
I mean, all this was not continuous; you can imagine that every, let’s say, every three points there was a weird one as those described above.
Unfortunately, Burel ruined the show, and that really pissed me off, as she raised her level during the second set. In particular, she displayed a quite unique ability to hit forehands on the run, which produced fantastic winners (to be fair she played a couple of them also in the first set); anyhow she still managed a few times to find great angles and to miss the following shot, while her opponent was basically in the stands; that rose my enthusiasm again.
Though, during the whole match, really, one could have counted on Hewitt. She was solid as a rock: or 1 meter long or in the net. A couple of times, trying to execute a completely normal backhand, without particular aims, the ball just parted from her racquet 30 degrees more left than the intended direction, as she was “a bit” late at impact. The girl played so badly that, when she sat before serving one last time in the match, she started to laugh: I guess she really caught the surrealistic side of what was going on, and I appreciated that.
If one of the two girls ever reads this: I am so sorry, this is a bit of a silly piece; I am sure you can do much better than this and the results you both achieved demonstrate it. But you both played so bad in this match!! Anyhow, you rewarded me with a really funny evening!!!
