With an outstanding performance, Caroline Wozniacki also won her second group game and qualified for the semi-finals after Karolina Pliskova. Caroline Garcia won the drama of the evening.
By Florian Goosmann from Singapore
After a smooth match you often ask yourself the question in tennis: Was I too good? Was the other one too bad? Or was it both?
At some point in the first set, I thought:”Do I really play that well,”said Caroline Wozniacki at the end of the unequal duel against Simona Halep in an on-court interview.
The Romanian had long since agreed with Wozniacki:”She plays great,”she already complained to Darren Cahill at the on-court coaching stage.”Okay, but don’t you think you can change anything by reducing the casual mistakes and giving your backhand a little more leeway?”Cahill returned.”It’s impossible,”Halep said.
Halep was more constructive towards the end of the discussion, but there was little change in the course of the discussion. Wozniacki dominated the duel between two players without the big gun, and when Halep got on the offensive and pushed Wozniacki out of position, the final ball was pushed into the net to win points. And otherwise… Wozniacki really did play great.
Almost characteristic of the last two rallies of the match. At the 1:6,2:5,30:30 Halep built up well to put the final, simple volley into the net instead of into the open field; at the match point she came forward again, was played by Wozniacki this time deeply – the harmless flight ball the Dane beat then surely past Halep to win 6:1,6:2 victory.
To answer the initial question of the good or bad: both were the case that day, which also had to do with the fact that Wozniacki landed early on one or two happy strikes, but also set the tone quickly with her strong serve. 88 percent of the first serves she brought into the field in passage one (in total 69 percent), already at her opening win over Caroline Garcia she delivered 72 percent. In both matches she only allowed one break ball, against Halep she fought him off with one of her two aces.
“I don’t know exactly how I’m going to judge this today, but I played both matches at a high level. It must be quite frustrating for the other girls,”Wozniacki said at the press conference – which sounded like an arrogant or presumptuous statement, but rather like a factual assessment. Halep spoke of not feeling the ball and feeling a little harder on himself,”I wanted too much sometimes. If I had managed to keep the ball in play longer, it could have run better. But I’ve missed too much.”
Caroline Garcia is perhaps the happiest lady in the field after Wozniacki. The Frenchman came to Singapore only by the Wuhan-Peking double strike and was unbeaten in eleven games until Halep finished the series on Monday. And as much as the Wozniacki/Halep game “shone”with one-sidedness, so much up and down was it between Garcia and Svitolina.
Garcia missed a 4-2 lead and a 4-0 and 5-2 tiebreak lead in the first leg, where she missed two set points and lost him 7-9. In the second set, she was trailing 5:3 with 0:40, but she took new courage and won five points in a row to equalise the set. In the third round, everything spoke for Svitolina in 5-3, especially since Garcia didn’t seem to be completely fit any more – but the 24-year-old pumped her way through and after the match ball turned into a diver.”It was an incredible fight, at every point,”she rejoiced after the 6:7 (7), 6:3,7:5 triumph.
A positive Winner/Unforced-Errors record is usually the confirmation of a good game, and that’s exactly what happened late in the evening in Singapore: Garcia beat 58 winners with 31 unforced mistakes, Svitolina scored 33 wins with 22 involuntary mistakes. Garcia made the point of the evening just before the end of the match.
While Pliskova has already been confirmed as the group winner in the White Group and second place will be played out in the duel between Venus Williams and Garbine Muguruza (morning from 1.30 p. m. CEST), a lot is still possible in the Red Group. Wozniacki is through – that’s for sure. Halep, Garcia and Svitolina all have a chance to progress.