Dokic started the stronger of the two, with holds to love. As when we saw her at RG, Schiavone was making heavy weather of her service games. Today was no different. Although going with servce in the next couple of games, Schiavone looked to be struggling to find her range. Dokic, on the other hand, was dishing out a display of the perfect serve out-wide!
Dokic was really making excellent use of the court, pulling Schiavone left and right but Schiavone was now beginning to settle down, getting a break to take the lead 5-4. She held to take the first set after Dokic started giving way to some careless errors.
Dokic broke in the second set – and I hadn’t really noticed this at RG, but it looked as though at times Schiavone was over reaching/stepping over to chase her ball-toss. Dokic held again to lead 3-0.
Schiavone managed to get herself on the board, and some wayward UEs from Dokic almost gave Fran a break back, but Dokic managed to hold to keep things to a single break lead.
Schiavone serving at 1-4 got broken again, leaving Dokic to serve out for the set – this was going to go the distance.
The trainer was on for Dokic, bathroom break for Schiavone and tweets were mourning the imminent arrival of rain!
The first two games went with serve in the third set, but at 1/1, 40/40 the crowd in the lower tiers were stirring… coats were going on, brollies started going up and the groundsmen appeared. Umpire Lynn Welch was stranded in the chair as the groundsmen covered the courts and pushed the chair to the side!
Some spectators were getting impatient and expected the roof to just close while the players were on!
We decided now would be a good time to nip out to the facilities, and during that time an announcement was made that the Met Office felt that the rain would be sustained and heavy; as such the roof would be coming over.
Schiavone was out of the blocks the faster of the two, holding her serve at the resumption, and then breaking Dokic as again she started spraying one too many UEs about.
Then Fran promptly got herself broken to love!
Things were back on serve and Dokic seemed to be mouting a comeback with some messy holding from Schiavione, and some amazing rallying and fighting by Dokic, who was not going to go without a fight.
That being said – she double faulted at a BP down to hand Schiavone a break to lead 5-3, and to serve out for the match.
Deuce/Ad galore, but finally one over-egged swing to send the ball away and Schiavone won.
No comments:
Post a Comment