As taglines go, “Slow and low” is not exactly the stuff of marketing dreams. It was nonetheless the order of the day as the WTA Finals got underway in Fort Worth, Texas, on a surface so sluggardly that it threatens to rip up the form book as rapidly as it shreds tennis balls.
The opening singles match of the star-spangled season finale, which pitted Jessica Pegula against Maria Sakkari, offered an early taste of what promises to be quite the rollercoaster ride.
Barely a week has passed since Pegula, a 28-year-old New Yorker enjoying the finest season of her career, routed Sakkari in straight sets to win her first WTA 1000 title in the zippy environs of Guadalajara, the high-altitude Mexican city where last year’s finals were staged. That Sakkari was able to exact immediate revenge, securing a 7-6 (8-6), 7-6 (7-4) win over the American world No 3, owed much to her ability to handle a challenging surface that, as she acknowledged afterwards, brought a kind of forced clarity to her approach.
“The court is very weird, I have to say,” said Sakkari, the fifth seed. “Maybe it feels weird to me coming from Mexico, that was very fast conditions. But it feels almost that it’s very slow. The ball doesn’t bounce, it bounces very low.
“If you don’t hit the ball then the ball does nothing, so you have to be very aggressive, that’s how I feel. If you don’t hit the serve, then it’s not effective. So you don’t want to give the opponent the chance to be the first one that dominates the point. That’s how it felt to me.”
A hit-or-be-damned surface would seem tailor-made for the big-serving, free-swinging Sakkari, yet the dynamics of an entertaining and high-quality contest were by no means straightforward. In contrast with Guadalajara, where the quick conditions meant Pegula’s flat, precise groundstrokes frequently rushed the Greek into error, Sakkari had plenty of time to wind up her elaborate forehand. But while that allowed her to play with more spin and control, it also afforded Pegula ample opportunity to line up her own shots.
On the evidence of Mexico, that should have swung the pendulum in the American’s favour. In practice, however, Pegula frequently looked far from her normal phlegmatic self, gesturing at the court in frustration as she was caught out by the low bounce and her apparent anxiety about the optimal string tension. It says much that Pegula, usually one of the tour’s most consistent and adaptable competitors, finished the contest with an uncharacteristic 33 unforced errors.
Make no mistake, though, this was a match won by Sakkari rather than lost by Pegula. Determined to make amends for what happened in Guadalajara, where she felt she was unable to do herself justice after completing a rain-interrupted semi-final win over Marie Bouzkova only hours before the final, Sakkari’s appetite for the fray was apparent from the first game, where she conjured a pair of majestic backhand winners to claim an early break.
Resilient in the rallies and alive to her opponent’s efforts to draw her forward, Sakkari stuck to her guns despite a remarkable show of stubbornness from Pegula. The American world No 3 fought back from a break down three times in the opener, saved two set points in the climatic tiebreak, recovered from 3-0 down in the second set, and saved two match points at 6-5 to force a second tiebreak.
That last act of escapology, which came amid some timid baseline play from Sakkari, briefly raised fears that the Greek’s goose might be cooked. It has been an underwhelming season for the 27-year-old after the highs of last year, when she was a semi-finalist at Roland Garros and Flushing Meadows, but she pushed for home with a third ace of the afternoon before twice out-rallying Pegula to secure the win.
“Now that I have my match played, [I know] I have to be very aggressive,” said Sakkari, who will advance to the last four for a second successive year if she beats Aryna Sabalenka on Wednesday.
“If I try to grind from two metres behind the baseline, there’s no chance I can win any more matches. So for me, it’s just very clear now what I have to do. Probably the court makes it very simple from my side.”
The expectation was that the surface would prove similarly accommodating for Ons Jabeur, the Tunisian second seed, who opened her campaign against Sabalenka in the second Nancy Richey Group match. Pegula, who enjoyed notable success with her sliced backhand approach against Sakkari, said afterwards that she expected Jabeur, whom she will face next, to reap similar benefits.
“She’s just super tricky to play, she’s kind of unorthodox, a lot of slice and I think it probably will work pretty well on these courts with them being really low bouncing,” said Pegula.
Again, though, it was the bigger hitter who prevailed, Sabalenka rallying from a break down in the decider to prevail 3-6, 7-6 (7-5), 7-5 after Jabeur stood within two points of victory in the second-set tiebreak. For all the slowness of the surface, which would seem to militate against her power, the Belarusian’s “see ball, hit ball” approach may yet prove better suited to the conditions than the skidding sorcery of Jabeur. Go figure.
Sabalenka – who said on the eve of the tournament that, after a challenging year, it was a miracle she had even qualified – afterwards branded her victory over Jabeur, the Wimbledon and US Open finalist, the best of her season.
“Playing against the No 2 in the world, losing the first set and still [being] able to fight through it, that’s why it’s the biggest win of the season,” said Sabalenka, 24, who is seeded seventh.
Given the conditions, however, it may be only the beginning for the likes of Sabalenka and Sakkari. Like last year, when the challenges of adjusting to the altitude of Guadalajara threw up all manner of surprises – not least Garbiñe Muguruza’s left-field run to the title – anything feels possible. Expect more miracles.