On the night of July 6, in a "away" match with twists and turns, Wang Xinyu, the only remaining player of the China Open team, defeated the host player British Dart 2-6 7-5 6-3 and advanced to the round of 16 of Wimbledon with his head held high, leading the China Open team to the second week of the Grand Slam.
Why are there twists and turns?
First of all, the game was disturbed by rain twice, and the requirements for state are very high; The second is the process of the game, which is repeatedly reversed, which can be called a suspense drama.
At the start of this year's grass-court season, there is one group that has made the Chinese tennis team tremble: the low-ranked Britons.
A group of Chinese tennis, both men and women, are almost completely defeated in the face of hundreds of ranked British players. As long as you play the British on grass courts, there seems to be no solution, and the opponent's ranking has no reference value at all.
Some fans analyze that the British have been playing tennis on the grass since they were children, and they are very adaptable to the rules of the grass game, some players only play the grass court season a year, and almost do not participate in other competitions, ranking hundreds is very normal, but it does not represent its true strength.
Wang Xinyu's opponent in this game, Dart, is ranked 100th in the world and is already the status of the second sister of the United Kingdom, but her combat effectiveness on the grass court is by no means at the level of 100.
In the first round of Wimbledon, Bai Zhuoxuan, ranked 95th in the world, faced off against Dart, and the final score was 4-6 0-6.
Wang Xinyu challenged the host player with the momentum of the first win in the TOP5, and was put down by the opponent as soon as he came up. In the first set, all the service games fell, and he only relied on breaking two games to quickly lose 2-6.
Judging from the content of the first set, I thought that Wang Xinyu would suppress the opponent in attack, hold, strength and stability, but in these four aspects, she was fully suppressed by the opponent. Dart's offense was more threatening, with more good shots and fewer turnovers; And Wang Xinyu's first-serve scoring rate is 36%, and the second-serve scoring rate is 18%, which even makes people feel that the statistical table is wrong.
After the start of the second set, Wang Xinyu began to adjust her strategy, frequently using the serve to interfere with her opponent, increase the cutting transition ball, minimize hitting errors, and finally achieved the first hold.
But too many mistakes put the game in a difficult situation. Wang Xinyu's tactics of grabbing the second serve frequently went out of bounds, and the chances of scoring turned into losing points, which was extremely demoralizing.
However, Dart's state remained quite excited, and in the warm atmosphere of the home stadium, he played fairy balls many times, and the momentum was like a rainbow.
In this very difficult situation, Wang Xinyu still insisted on biting the score. After Dart led 3:1, the score was 3:3; when Dart led 5-4, Wang Xinyu struggled to hold her serve, only one point short of allowing match point to appear; Then he took advantage of the opponent's mistake and broke serve at the end of the set to get back a ride.
I thought that in the deciding set, Dart's physical strength and concentration would decline, and when Wang Xinyu could take advantage of the victory to chase after him, the opponent continued to perform strongly in the cheers of the home audience, and broke Wang Xinyu's serve at the beginning of the deciding set, and soon led 3:0, and the situation became precarious again.
At this time, Wang Xinyu's resilience and big heart played a role again, although there were still a lot of mistakes, although the opponent was still a fairy ball frequently, but when it came to the key ball or break point, Wang Xinyu could really grit his teeth and withstand it, so almost every game was in the repeated see-saw, Wang Xinyu actually sent out an invisible egg, and closed the game in 6 consecutive games.
Compared with the last game against Pegula, Wang Xinyu's form in this game has declined significantly, and the same three-set battle is reflected in the data, sending 47 unforced errors in the whole game, compared with only 34 in the last game; The winning points were 32, which was also 6 fewer than in the previous game.
When the form is not good, in the face of the imposing host players, they can still accept the victory through adjustment, and Wang Xinyu's evolution continues.
The first is the adjustment of strategy, the first set of the serve was all broken, indicating that the state of the serve in this game is indeed not online (there is no ace in the whole court), then from the second set onwards, the frequent use of serve net tactics, although facing certain risks, but the results proved to be more beneficial than disadvantageous, and the change of serve is much easier.
In the first two sets, the opponent's forehand is super strong, and as long as the forehand is given the opportunity to attack, he can almost hit a position that cannot be returned. Then, since then, he has been suppressing the backhand, and only when the gap is large will he give back the forehand, forcing the opponent to make many backhand errors.
In the second set, there were many mistakes in grabbing the second serve, and in the third set, although I still had to grab, I was much more cautious, controlled the landing point of the ball, tried not to catch the long, and sometimes received the ball by cutting, which was also better than direct mistakes. In the third set, the number of points sent away in the tie-break was drastically reduced.
The above changes are all changes made by Wang Xinyu according to his own state and the opponent's style of play in the game, although they may not be in line with the tactics formulated before the game, but it turns out that this change affects the outcome of the game.
Wang Xinyu's on-the-spot ball quotient is still improving.
Then there's the resilience of the game. Only if you have faced it directly can you know how difficult it is to play a good grass player away from home.
Especially in the cheering of the home audience, it really takes a big heart to be able to stabilize yourself and maintain a normal heart to play.
In this game, in the case of the opponent's bursting state, Wang Xinyu lost in the first set, fell behind 1-3 and 4-5 in the second set, and fell behind 0-3 in the deciding set.
No matter what the circumstances, Wang Xinyu will not easily hand over the victory, at least will fight with the opponent to the end.
With this victory, Wang Xinyu reached the last 16 of Wimbledon for the first time, while also equaling her best Grand Slam result. This year's Wang Xinyu is more mature in technology, ball quotient, and mentality, which is worthy of holding up the fans' higher expectations for her.
History is ahead, continue to do your best, the future has come!