John Bolan, friend, reader and contributor of Women’s Tennis Blog, is at the US Open and he sent me his summary of the second day. I wanted to share with you John’s view of the exciting first round match between Galina Voskoboeva and Francesca Schiavone.
The player who lost and should have won was Galina Voskoboeva playing against No.7 seed Francesca Schiavone in Louis Armstrong Stadium before thousands of fans.
Francesca started out winning the first four games until Galina got comfortable on the large court. Galina won 9 out of the next 12 games losing the first set 6-3 and winning the second 6-1. The players took an off-court break before the third set. After the rest, Francesca came out firing, winning the first 3 games on her way to a 6-4 victory. Francesca never won more than one game in a row except for those 2 starts in sets one and three.
Galina was the one who looked like the Top 10 player. She won the same number of games (13) as she dominated the stats hitting 32 winners to Francesca’s 17 and winning every service stat. She had only one double fault compared to a horrible 16 for Francesca. Galina’s groundstrokes were so perfect, but at key times she missed on important points.
After signing a few autographs, Galina received a thunderous ovation as she walked off the court.
The world No.87 Galina also is a top doubles player and is well coached by the former great Russian player, Alina Jidkova. We will be hearing much more in the coming months from Galina Voskoboeva. (photo: © Neal Trousdale)
