Time is a precious commodity on a tennis court. The way a player uses it is always revealing. There are outliers like Daniil Medvedev, who likes to retreat several metres behind the baseline, allowing himself plenty of time to take a big cut at the ball. There are more conventional power players, the likes of Serena Williams and Garbiñe Muguruza, who prefer to hug the baseline, unsettling their opponents by minimising the time it takes for their shots to reach the other side.
There are crafty types such as Ashleigh Barty and Ons Jabeur, players who will work out what an opponent wants and make sure they don’t get it, slowing down rallies with their spin and variety or speeding them up with their weight of shot.
And then there’s Leylah Fernandez, who has her own special trick: she steals time. This is not simply a matter of holding her position on the baseline, although that is certainly part of it. Like Angelique Kerber, who she ambushed in the previous round of the US Open to set up Tuesday night’s tense quarter-final showdown with Elina Svitolina, Fernandez has the soft knees, strong legs and rare blend of balance and technique to squat low and absorb an opponent’s pace without conceding ground.
The young Canadian has an equally Kerber-like capacity to control the racket face in extremis, redirecting the ball to create short, sharp angles and return with interest shots that might force other players into retreat. Again, this has temporal consequences, limiting the reaction time on the opposite side of the net just when her opponents least expect it.
Where Fernandez really comes into her own as a time bandit, however, is in her ability to make the ball explode off her racket with virtually no backswing, while simultaneously directing her shots with pinpoint accuracy. Like a Larry Holmes jab or one of those sudden, lethal toe-enders in which Ronaldinho used to specialise, Fernandez has the ability to fell an opponent with one short, sharp shock. It is an approach alien to Svitolina, who likes nothing better than to stand off the baseline and scrap. Few players defend better than the Ukrainian, but aggression at key moments has been central to Fernandez’s astonishing run in New York, and it gave the 19-year-old a crucial edge as she consigned the fifth seed to an epic 6-3, 3-6, 7-6 (7-5) defeat.
A case in point came in the sixth game of the opening set, where Fernandez pounced on a short second serve before winning a 24-stroke rally to claim the first break of the match. It was just the kind of protracted exchange on which Svitolina might have been expected to thrive. But while the Ukrainian remained camped out a good two metres behind the baseline, Fernandez stood in, progressively squeezing the time and space available to her scrambling opponent. The coup de grâce was a two-pronged affair, a searing sliced backhand drawing Svitolina outside the doubles alley before a sweetly-timed backhand down the middle of the court completed the job. “Svitolina is playing not to lose and Fernandez is playing to win,” was the neat summation offered by Martina Navratilova in her broadcast commentary for Amazon Prime Video.
Having conceded her first set at this year’s tournament, Svitolina was not about to lie down. A semi-finalist in 2019, she came into the contest on a nine-match winning streak, following her title-winning run in Chicago, and buoyed by a summer that has brought an Olympic bronze medal and marriage to Gael Monfils. For Fernandez, meanwhile, the challenge was a novel one. Her shock wins over Naomi Osaka and Kerber had both come after losing the first set, the teenager belatedly rousing herself within a game or two of defeat. The question now was whether she could maintain the attacking intensity that had given her the upper hand.
The answer was not long in coming. Shaking off her early passivity, Svitolina began opening her shoulders, racing to a 5-1 lead before overcoming a brief wobble to see out the set with an ace. An early break in the decider handed Fernandez the momentum again, and at 2-5 Svitolina looked to be down and out. But she mounted a brilliant comeback, forcing a tiebreak in which she again forced her way back into contention after trailing. At 5-5, however, Fernandez pulled off a dramatic forehand winner, a running pass flying off the net tape to bring up the first match point of the night. Svitolina drove a backhand long, and the US Open had its youngest semi-finalist since Maria Sharapova in 2005.
“Today’s match was definitely one of the hardest, not only tennis-wise but also mentally and emotionally,” said Fernandez, who will face Aryna Sabalenka in the last four after the second-seeded Belarusian beat a below-par Barbora Krejcikova 6-1, 6-4. “Svitolina is a great player, great fighter. I was glad I was able to fight in the first set. In the second set she upped her level and I unfortunately made a few mistakes on key moments. I’m glad I was able to recuperate for the third set. The tiebreaker, too. A little bit lucky at 5-All, but I’ll take all the luck I can get. I was glad I was able to push through the finish line.”
The march of the teenagers continues.