I want to keep this nice and short as nothing too exciting happened. Or better, in my free hour at lunch time dedicated to the tournament I have witnessed to nothing super exciting.
My intentions were good: the plan was to give a glim to Iva Jovic’s first round match, i.e. one of the two American girls I have spotted in the qualifications. She was scheduled to play against Nina Vargova, a Slovakian 16 year old ranked 39: it was supposed to be a perfect test for the young American. I do not know Vargova and I checked her activity: it seems that her rating is justified, as she has earned her points all around Europe, obtaining some good results. Thus, I guess she had her worst day in the last three years, as there was not a chance she could hit a ball in the court, whatever happened. The few winners she hit were justified by the laws of statistics. Also Jovic has played pretty badly, worse than in the qualifications, even if for at least some part of the match she tried tomove her opponent and play at a high rythm, as she did 2 days ago. What I noticed today is that the girl complitelly misses of a first and second serve, so she is constantly under attack when starting the point. No surprise, being her 14 and owning a small frame; I am sure that in the next years she will fix this. Nevertheless, I don’t think this week Jovic will go any further, as her lack of power is too evident to allow her to play against a high level player (who oes not mess as Vargova did).
Beside her serve problems, today Jovic missed a lot, she was late when attacked, which resulted in shots that fairly often landed one metre long and her tennis was not as geometrical as in the qualification matches; this happened at least for a good part of the set i have seen. I left the match after the end of the first set, which Jovic won by 7-5: it was a bit of a painful experience. The final score was 7.5 4-6 6-4 in favour of the young American and, from what i have seen, her victory is anyway deserved, as she at least tried to implement some solutions, whilst Vargova didn’t really appear to me to have any clue of what she was doing, except than hitting few random winners.
While watching Jovic’s, i also managed to follow the match between Lorenzo Carboni and Daniel Vallejo, the latter being the first seed of the tournament. This was a much better match and it was a tight one, that Vallejo won by 4-6 6-4 6-4. The two guys played equally well, but i must say that neither of them showed impressive winners (no Swiatek or Tsitsipas-like shots) and I was expecting a bit mote by Vallejo in light of his ranking, to be honest. Overall the Paraguayan deserved to win, as he proposed few more solutions than the Italian, being also keen from time to time to gain his points at the net, which is always nice to see. Carboni has displayed his best shots from the backhand side. None of the two served particularly well. For sure they didn’t impress me as Hovde did yesterday, nor as Giunta did before, even if the match between the two was an entertaining one to follow. Having said the above, let’s not forget that Carboni is two year younger than Vallejo: in light of the age gap between the two, I would consider Carboni to be the player with more potential.
The first round is now over and some second round matches have been played too, including Hovde’s, who won today by 6-1 6-3, beating also the curse of my celebrative articles. I knew she was good.
