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by Prip The match between Angelika Bachmann and Vanessa Henke was certainly a huge battle, and could have gone either way in every sense. Each point was a baseline battle, both players trading hard flat groundies and a lot of the points came from forced (or unforced, depending on how you see it) errors, mostly mishit shots. The balls were certainly flying at great speeds across the net, and both players were either trying to muscle their way out on top or were trying to out-do the other. In any case, the competition was certainly there, and the crowd was treated to intense rallies throughout the match. Angelika took the first set 7-2 in the tie-breaker, aided by her opponent falling apart a bit in the pressure. Vanessa definitely made up for it, though, getting an early double-break in the second set and looked definite to take the set. At this point, Vanessa looked considerably more tired than her compatriot, and slipped a little before closing out the set and evening it out at 1 set apiece. The third set went pretty much even all the way, with Henke finding herself down 4-5 but gave it everything she got, played like she had nothing to lose and evened it back to go into a tie-break. Here, she fell apart again, and after all her hard work, found herself down 1-4 in the tie-break a few unforced errors later. She did manage to play a couple more solid points, but was aided by some errors from Bachmann, and the score went back to 4-all. Almost predictably, one of the players fell apart in the last few points, and this time it happened to be the less experienced Vanessa Henke. 3 silly errors in a row gave the match to Angelika, who had a match against Maria Alejandra Vento to look forward to later in the day. The German would certainly be at a disadvantage having played such a draining match, while her opponent had cruised to a 6-2 6-3 victory. |