In a much anticipated rematch between old rivals, Martina Hingis couldn’t manage to capitalize on an early lead and a cramping Venus Williams to eventually go down 6-4 5-7 4-6 in the 2nd round of the J&S Cup in Warsaw, Poland.
Nerves and lack of match play clearly played a huge part for both players. After a difficult 1st round against Maria Kirilenko, this was only Hingis’s 2nd match on red clay in 4 years. Williams, on the other hand, was playing her 3rd match of the season after losing in the 1st round at the Australian Open and winning her first match against a Polish wild card in Warsaw.
This encounter started with what has become the story of the match – breaks of serves. At 4-4, Hingis managed to hold serve & break Williams for a 6-4 lead on her 4th set point.
Hingis immediately raced to a 3-0 lead in the 2nd set and looked like she had the match on her hands. Williams quickly regained her focus & leveled it to 3-3. Each player then held serve until Hingis was leading 6-4 5-4, 30-0, when she apparently got frustrated with what she believed was a bad line call. She quickly lost her concentration and perhaps a bit of confidence, thereby allowing Williams to take the 2nd set 7-5
At 1-1 in the 3rd set, Williams was clearly cramping and asked for an injury time-out. It would have been a different story if Hingis was able to take advantage of Williams’ lack of fitness, but she wasn’t able to. They kept holding serve and breaking each other, game per game, until 4-4. At this stage, Hingis wasn’t able to capitalize on a game point and surrendered her serve. Williams served for the match and won 4-6, 7-5, 6-4 after more than 2½ hours of play.
This should be an extremely tough loss for Hingis to swallow, as she led a set and 3-0, then 5-4 30-0, and lost it. Their head-to-head is now tied at 10-10. She hit 12 winners to Venus’ 53, and 39 unforced errors to Venus’ 80. In the end, those who watched the match state that it was Hingis’s weak serves, passive play at crucial times and inability to convert important points that lost her the match. Whether it was a bad day, lack of confidence or lack of practice on clay, she certainly has a lot to improve on for the next tournament.
While today was definitely a setback, Hingis gets a few extra days to prepare for Berlin, which begins next Monday, and then she heads for Rome beginning May 15. Here’s to hoping she makes a better showing in her next clay tournaments!
