From: cs30@prism.gatech.EDU (Christopher Smith)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.tennis
Subject: Comments on women's SF matches
Date: 28 Jan 93 22:33:44 GMT
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology


After watching ESPN's coverage of the women's semifinals, I have
some comments:

1. Seles d. Sabatini   6-1 6-2

  Despite the one-sided result, I found this the most interesting
match.

  ESPN showed just the last set of this match.  IMO Monica Seles
didn't play particularly great tennis to win this match (at least
in the 2nd set, when she hit only 5 winners), not as good say as
the VS Championships.  She didn't have to.  Sabatini lost this
match by committing clusters of unforced errors, especially from
the back court.

  One thing that Monica did exceptionally well was to retrieve
Sabatini drop shots and turn them into unbelievable winners.

  Essentially I felt Sabatini overplayed a number of her shots,
undoubtedly because she was under a lot of pressure.  Sabatini 
appeared to be hitting her serves harder and flatter than in her
previous match with Pierce (getting in the 80-90 mph range).
However, the result was a lot of double-faults and only 2 of 7
service games won, but it is a sign that she is at least trying
to work on her serve.  She also flattened out a greater percentage
of her groundstrokes than usual, but again hit a lot of errors.

  Sabatini did reasonably well when she approached the net, and
she even made some daring approaches such as off of Monica's first
serve.  But she probably should have played even more net points...
she got burned at times by Seles passing shots, but that was her
best percentage play.  Sabatini lost a large majority of the
baseline rallies.


2. Graf d. Sanchez Vicario  7-5 6-4

  ESPN showed the match from game 8 on.  Graf won this match by
overall playing a cleaner match than Sanchez Vicario.  However, at
the beginning (according to ESPN) and near-end of the match, she
netted or sprayed a few more forehands than at other times.  Graf
was probably rushing a bit toward the end.  She definitely was
not playing as well as against Capriati.

  Arantxa was up 5-3 in the first set but really squandered her
opportunities to close out the set.  Some of that had to do with
Graf, but Arantxa was uncharacteristically erroneous off both wings.
I felt Arantxa got a little down on herself in the early stages of
the 2nd set, which I am not used to seeing from her.

  Sanchez Vicario approached and won more points at the net than
Graf (sometimes playing some great angle volleys), and she should
probably have made a few more attempts to pressure Graf at the net.
Usually when Graf tried to approach the net, Sanchez Vicario replied
by hitting a great lob or passing shot.

  I felt that Graf's slice backhand was an asset to her in this
match, as sometimes these shots were low and "spinny" enough to
worry Arantxa.

--

  It's hard to predict the outcome of the women's final, but I expect
little surprises in match play: long baseline rallies, few net plays,
and little experimentation (e.g., not many Graf topspin backhands).
I think to win the final, Graf needs to be a little more consistent
than she was today.


..Chris

-- 
Christopher Smith                        csmith@cc.gatech.edu
College of Computing, Georgia Tech       404/853-0937