Caty McNally
I have predicted Thursday morning that Gauff would have won the tournament and bet on it a beer with a friend of mine. Though, I would have expected the other finalist to be Iga Swiatek and, indeed, I wouldn’t have expected Caty McNally to show up with the tennis she played.
Now I feel very stupid, because I had the opportunity to see McNally for two years in a row in Bonfiglio but I didn’t really grab it as I watched only a couple of doubles matches of the girl, without paying particular attention to her. And honestly, from the little I have seen in such occasions, I wasn’t even so impressed by McNally.
I have really focused on the American girl for the first time in the third set of the semifinal she played yesterday against Iga Swiatek and she surprised me a lot; I would spend a few words on this match in the “wrap up” article which will be uploaded soon after this one.
McNally is a wonderful player and showed a very good tennis in the final. Even if not extremely powerfully, she serves very well and gains a good number of direct points with her first serves. She has a really solid and powerful forehand, which she plays with a huge backswing and shoulder turn. Her backhand is not as big as the forehand, but is still a very solid shot; she plays a classic double handed shot, but she can also slice very well. Caty shows her best at the net: she is a skilled volleyer, owning the ability to handle easy balls in an easy way; but she deals greatly also with difficult shots as low volleys and stop volleys: she can basically do whatever she wants with her net game. Also, Caty plays fairly often plays serve and volley and, surprisingly, she does that also in the most delicate points: today she attempted it on a match point in favour of Gauff (she didn’t need to play the volley, as Gauff return was long) and yesterday she served and volleyed on the a match point in favour of Swiatek and on the following point, and on her own match point too.
What about Cori Gauff, instead? she owns every quality: she is powerful, very fast, has outstanding defensive skills, she can topspin or play flat; she even plays decently at the net and hits effective drop shots, even if the execution is not beautiful to see. Finally, She own guts too, as she demonstrated last September against Anisimova and even more today.
This one was the second Roland Garros’ final in a row starring two American players, as last year’s final was played between Claire Liu and Whitney Osuigwe.
The match started all in favour of McNally: she was playing perfectly while Gauff hit central and fairly short, allowing Caty to be in control of all the rallies. In particular, Caty was really good in returning the huge serve of her opponent by blocking her swing and hit always deep and central returns, not allowing Gauff to take any advantage from the start. For the whole match Gauff had a percentage of won points on first serves lower or about 50%, which is highly unusual for her; this happened more due to McNally merits than due to her own fault. On 4-0 in favour of McNally, Gauff understood that her game was bringing her to nowhere and started to look for more depth, even if often her shot were long. Gauff managed anyway to gain a game, but the beautiful tennis of McNelly, made of big forehand winners, drop shots which were winners or anyway allowed her to open the court for a winning passing shots, and sudden attacks to the net continued and she secured the first set by 6-1.
McNally took an early lead also in the second set, immediately breaking Gauff; but it was evident that the young American was alive and kicking, as she was playing with much more depth and starting to look for some angles. McNally instead took a little pause; she double faulted a few times and was a bit less aggressive from the baseline, hoping maybe to obtain some further cooperation from her opponent who, in the first set, showed very little of what she is able to do. This was not a wise choice as Gauff, having equalised, broke McNally again and took a 3-2 40-15 lead. Though, when Gauff seemed to have gained control, Mcnally was able to raise her level once more and broke back immediately. The following game was very emotional with great shots from both sides, some mistakes, a couple of wrong drop shots by McNally, a beautiful serve and volley by her, superb passing shots and all whatever else one could imagine. Eventually it was Gauff who was able to gain the game by breaking once more her opponent and to secure herself a lead of 4-3 which became a 6-3 shortly after in favour of Cori.
Caty was not impressed at all by her opponent’s return and, thanks to a couple of double faults of Gauff, but also thanks to some huge points played by her, she broke twice and got a 3-0 lead in the decisive set. The match was far from being over: Gauff managed to win 4 games in a row and take a 4-3 lead. The loser of the 2 partials (I mean the 3 games in a row in favour of McNally and 4 games in a row in favour of Gauff) didn’t lower her level; yes, sure there were some mistakes and few double faults from both sides, but bad points were always followed by wonderful ones, such that also the crowd was enthusiast of some moments of very high quality and entertaining tennis the girls were offering. Finding herself a game down, McNally reacted as a champion, managing to equalise and gain three break points in the following game. Gauff neutralised two of them with good serves, but the third one was played very intelligently by McNally: she hit 4-5 very high and deep balls in a row on which Gauff couldn’t really take any risk; as soon as she did, she missed, allowing McNally to serve for the match. Finished? Nope, as Gauff broke back, hold her serve and managed to gain 2 match points in the following game. McNally saved the first with the attempt of serve and volley referred to at the beginning of this piece and the second one with a crazy and millimetric drop shot, that was even more cray given that she missed a few of them in a row during the previous games. During all these upsets in the third set the level was really high and the beautiful points were many more than those caused by unforced errors or mistakes.
In the tie break Gauff was more aggressive and she secured it to herself quite easily, winning thus a slam at 14 of age, after that eight months ago was the finalist in the U.S. Open.
Pity that McNally has lost: both players played wonderfully and both deserved to win this very intense match, which was made even more interesting by the different styles of tennis displayed by the two girls.
