A short preamble to this piece: I have seen Matteo Arnaldi just next to me and only then I realised how thin and still small he is: I am the double of Matteo and this means he is 1/4 of Emilio Nava. It must have been very difficult for Matteo to play against a guy so much bigger than him (notwithstanding Emilio’s help); many praises to Matteo, then, for his yesterday’s win. Today, though, Matteo didn’t offer any bis, as he was easily beaten by Jonas Forejtek. Thiago Tirante, who has beaten American Martin Damm is the other finalist of the boy’s event.
I had some personal stuff to deal with, so today i watched only the semifinal between Linda Fruhvirtova and Alexa Noel, which was meant to be the most interesting match to me, anyway, and for sure it met my expectations (and was even better).
The beginning of the match seemed a sort of slaughter of the poor Alexa Noel. The first set ended up 6-1 in favour of Fruhvirtova, who was exceptionally good in contering Noel’s violent forehands and returning the ball at double speed. Noel asked then for a coaching, which was given by an anonymous former player, HANA MANDLIKOVA, who was captaining the U.S. team. I think Noel well received the message that things as they were didn’t work out and started to chop each of her forehands, something that Alexa can do really well. In all the second set, Linda was hitting hard, but not hard enough to gain winners against Alexa’s weightless balls. After 14 shots hit 100% hard, Linda couldn’t gain any advantage and eventually missed the 15th. More, Alexa was very effective in hitting drop-shots, obtaining several points with them. Things went on as such untill 5-1, when Linda started to lower the rythm her too, shorten a bit her trajectories in order to avoid Noel to always hit at the height of her hips and, sometimes, she also attaked Noel on her backhand, gaining easy smashes to win points, as Alexa’s only weapon in those situation is a sliced lob, which is a heck of a difficult shot. Linda recovered to 4-5, 30-0 in her advantage, when Noel started to moonball her. This destabilised Linda, who lost the set the following few points and the set.
The third set went on mostly as the first half of the first one, but Noel was a bit more faulty than before and no player could get a decisive advantage untill 4-4, when Noel broke a last time her opponent and defended her serve on the following game. This set was really emotional, and it was a pitty that the match was decided by a quite silly mistake from Fruhirtova, who missed a backhand hit from her service line.
I spoke already a few times about Alexa Noel, and basically my view remains unchanged: her sliced backhand is good and it can bounce really low (I think she improved the shot in this respect), but not really good, as she never plays it down the line: this she still must improve, in order to be able to play her tennis at top levels. Plus, when attacked on her backhand, she gets into serious troubles, as she has no alternatives to lobs, owning no passing shots. And this is what Linda Fruhvirtova missed and that in my view costed her the match: Linda too many times had the opportunity to charge the net against Alexa’s backhand, but she took the chance only in the second set. In the third set, even when she was two metres in the court, she preferred going back to the baseline instead of charging the net, giving the chance to Alexa to break her rythm and forcing her to restart the rally from scratch. Eventually, most of times Linda ended up missing. To Linda excuse, one can say that she is very unexperienced and that she is not exactly Navratilova (nor Mandlikova) at the net; though, by attacking Alexa on the backhand, most of times she wouldnt’t even have needed to volley, but only to smash, something which she can do well.
Another way to play against Noel would be in my view to hit high top spin on her backhand, forcing her to impact her slices above her sholder; but Linda cannot really play highly spinned tennis up to now.
Alexa will play the final against Sada Nahimana and I think that the American is the favourite. Though, Nahimana can topspin very well and can play high. This may cause troubles to Alexa’s slices. Tomorrow we will see.
Nahimana will play also the doubles finals, paired with Park and against Kawaguchi and Nagy. Also Thiago Tirante, a finalist in the boys’ event, will play the double finals, paired with Croatian Kalender and against the Aussie pair composed by Schoolcate and Sweeny (the latter being only boy shorter than 1.80 in this tournament, I belive).
Finals will be broadcasted live here: https://www.supertennis.tv/ , starting from 11 AM Continental Europe Time.
