Molinaro – pics with mobile phones are crap
You’ll understand the meaning of this new silly heading at the end of the article; as a start, instead, I want to spend a few lines recapping the results of the first day. There were surprises (were they, really?) from the start, since in the first match of the main draw the third seed, Alexa Noel, immediately suffered a quite harsh defeat by Marta Custic: the result was 6-4 6-1 in favour of the Spanish; actually, this wasn’t such an unexpected ending for me, as I heard Custic to be a good tennis player, whilst my 3 followers may know that Noel has never fully convinced me. 1st seed Wang was very solid in getting rid of a complicated opponent as Curmi, who reached the semifinals last week in Santa Croce and confirmed all her qualities by giving the Chinese a hard time: the final score was 7-5 6-4 in favour of Wang. Also, Tauson showed to be a serious candidate to win the tournament, by beating Nahimana by 6-2 6-2, whilst 7th seed Italian Cocciaretto faced even less problem in getting rid of wild card Tsygourova (a Swiss girl who trains in Bonacossa, the club where the event is played). Naho Sato, instead, faced a lot of troubles to overcome Vismane, winning by 7-6 4-6 6-4. As per the Boys’ event, the big upset was the loss of Dalibor Svrcina, who was defeated by Santa Croce’s finalist Erel (a.k.a. “Yankee”) – though, this result was sort of predicted by the director of this website – whilst Santa Croce’s winner, American Kingsley hasn’t got distracted by his recent triumphs and easily got rid of the French Royer, beating him by 6-2 6-3. Next round will be much tougher for Kingsley: it’s better that he tries to justify the first name he owns, as he is scheduled to face the second seed Tseng. Finally, the 8th seed Park is already out.
Now that I’m done with a useless recap of results which one could have easily checked by himself on the web, let’s speak about more interesting facts (at least for me). You have to know that I have an instinctive sympathy for Luxemburgish Eleonora Molinaro which is quite inexplicable, since I’ve never seen a single shot by this girl: maybe the positive attitude towards her is due to the fact that I’ve been so used to see Molinaro around on the tour, losing in semis of Grades 2 and never being able to really emerge, that I become affectionate to her. But, eventually, guess what: starting from the end of last year, Molinaro has started to win wherever she played, both on junior and pro tour: many times I spent a few lines highlighting how much this girl was continuing to win during the first four months of 2018. Yesterday, Molinaro was scheduled to play against a French player I never heard before, Manon Leonard; from time to time I was giving a glim to the live score which was progressing real slowly, showing that the match between the two was tight. I couldn’t resist any longer: at 12 I evaded from my office, grabbed a cab and went to see Molinaro playing. I arrived at the central court, where the match was going on, in the middle of the tiebreak of the first set, which was eventually won by Molinaro. Notwithstanding the lead, she seemed, though, to be quite nervous: in the opening games of the second set, Molinaro double faulted hitting a second serve as strong as the first on 15-30 and in the following point she hit a violent backhand 1 metre long (an awful shot), letting her opponent immediately equalise. Up to this stage, I didn’t really notice anything special from Molinaro’s opponent, Manon Leonard, if not that she owns a fairly small frame and her legs are thick as two cigarettes, a couple of nice drop shots, few good volleys and some tight flattish crosscourt backhands winners. The gap between the two anyway was quite evident as, in the long run, the French was being overpowered by her opponent. Molinaro, indeed, is a quite big hitter. She is a pure baseliner, effective with both shots: in particular, if she can find a good placement on the ball, she cracks her double-handed backhand, which she can hit very flat being still able to control it, at really high speed: that shot digs holes in the ground. She has a geometric game, trying to move her opponent from left to right, then left, then right etc. Honestly, one can immediately realise that volleying is not exactly her most proficient quality: as with Gracheva, I observed few times that, when the Luxemburg girl is forced to advance, she prefers to stop early and hit full swing volleys than doing two more steps and hit a normal high volley: I find this to be a sign of lack of confidence in net play. Maybe, compared to my new Russian tennis love, Molinaro is less able to commute defensive situations in attacking ones. Anyhow, even if not very imaginative, the Luxemburgish girl (owning Italian origins) is a very solid player who may be difficult to beat, as she doesn’t miss much, hits at a good pace and is precise in finding angles. When the score in the second set was about 4-2 in favour of the Luxemburgish, Leonard decided to try something new: what were before isolated charges to the net (with good results: one could realise that the girl is gifted in volleying) became a constant serve and volley and a constant charge when returning. It was from Novotna’s time that I didn’t see a player playing three serves and volleys in a row. One point will indeed remain in my memory, as Molinaro returned the French’s serve with rocket forehand between her opponent’s feet: Manon countered this shot with a low forehand volley – whilst still advancing – which had a low trajectory and bounced one foot shorter of the baseline’s tee: that volley took me back in time by 20 years, when it was usual to see such kind of shots played by the best players, whilst they are now almost extinguished.
Eventually, Molinaro proved to currently be a more solid and stronger player than Leonard and she managed to win the set by 6-3; but the most beautiful tennis was shown by the French: in particular, her net game is supreme, as she owns an ability to play serve and volley or to play chip and charge I have never seen in juniors, not even in DioTiSalvi Chwalinska (who relies more on sneak attacks than on pure serve and volley). In my view, what I heard once Bollettieri saying to a young player he was watching, applies well to Leonard “she should charge even when she shouldn’t”, as a net game is what Leonard really owns.
In today’s game, a player like Manon is as rare as a beautiful piece of art: I soon realized that I left the office craving for Molinaro,[1] but, eventually, I was more fascinated by Leonard(o).
[1] In Italian Molinaro means miller – this explains the word pun in the heading.
