Then let's keep our eyes on Kristie Ahn. Ahn played an almost nerve-less first round match against Dinara Safina, keeping her head and providing Safina all the trouble she needed to get match-tough at the U.S. Open. (Safina helped a bit by double-faulting ten times.) In the second set, it took Ahn five break points to get the job done, but she hung in. And she managed to save a match point at the end. Well done.
Ahn has a 10-1 record on the ITF circuit, and--in juniors and in pro play--she has yet to lose a tiebreaker.
Safina needs to fix the service problem. Only Justine Henin can double-fault ten times in a match and continue to get away with it most of the time.
Safina def. Ahn, 6-3, 6-4
3 comments:
Agree about safina's serve...and I think the nature of her double faults is bad for her, so many of them are shank serves that go half way up the net...if she gets rid of that from her game she will be number 1 probably
Safina's serve could be classified into two categories: really good and really bad.
Have you seen that second serve that landed a meter beyond the baseline in the second set? Sometimes I wonder how her serve goes to extremes...
Yes, I did. Actually, Safina's service issues are a lot like Henin's. Henin didn't have service problems until she returned from that long illness layoff. From then on, she would go from triple double-faulting to hitting aces in the course of two games--sometimes in one game.
I have a crack theory about Safina's service problem: She so loves to be in the thick of things and to come from behind, and I think that when she is at the beginning of things, she is ill at ease.
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