As a guest on a few podcasts following the US Open, I argued that the semifinal match between Naomi Osaka and Jennifer Brady in New York was the most spectacular match of the tournament on the women’s side. The encounter featured rallies of extreme high pace, and whereas one may expect a notable dose of wild errors to accompany the potent shot-making in such cases, both women kept their game clean and increased their scintillating shot production instead as the match progresses. I was left wondering how in the world they did not mishit more balls at that velocity.
Tuesday morning at Roland Garros two weeks later, Brady was part of another high-quality match similar in posture to the one in New York, except that her opponent was not a proven performer at the elite WTA level with Major titles in her resumé like Osaka, but was rather the former world junior number one Clara Tauson, the 17-year-old Danish player, who stepped on Court Simonne-Mathieu for her first match in the main draw of a Major. She had only one main draw WTA Tour match in her record prior to entering the qualifying rounds at Roland Garros, a first-round loss at the Lugano event last year, after coming through qualifying. Let those last few lines sink in first. Then, consider what took place during the two hours and 45 minutes of this delightful outing, eventually ending 6-4 3-6 9-7 in favor of the youngster. Tauson not only matched Brady’s shot-making prowess at every juncture of the match, but also put on display the type of mental resiliency that usually defines top-notch performers on the WTA Tour.
Tauson survived two match points and persevered through the disappointment of not capitalizing on three of her own, before coming out on top on her fifth two games later, all taking place in the extended stages of the third set against a seasoned and in-form opponent whose level remained high throughout. It is not that Brady did something wrong and deserved to lose. It is rather Tauson who plucked away to victory by doing (almost) everything right.
To hardly anyone’s surprise, especially to those familiar with Tauson’s game, both players began the match on fifth gear, nailing the ball in an effort to dominate rallies, leading to the first five points ending in direct winners.
At the end of three games, there were already a total of 13 winners on record, nine of them coming from Tauson’s racket. May I remind you that we heard repeatedly since the competition began, that the courts playing slower due to weather conditions and the newly adopted – and bigger – Wilson balls. Feel free to toss that observation in the back of the closet for this match.
Tauson broke Brady’s serve to grab an early 3-1 lead and you could tell Brady was already forced to put her high-IQ into overdrive to come up with answers to the overwhelming flow of powerful shots raining her way from the other side of the court. Tauson was generating most of her winners from either the middle of the court on her forehand (eight such winners, four to each corner) or from the ad corner with her backhand down-the-line (five of them in the set). So, Brady began testing the one unproven side in the match thus far and began pulling Tauson wide to her forehand side to see, I presume, if the youngster could effectively produce winners from that location on the court.
She first tried it for the first time at 0-15 on Tauson’s serve in that 3-1 game and it led to an error by the Danish player. Brady finished the game with a winner (one of her ten total) to get back on serve and doubled down on that particular pattern, taking away the two spots on the court from where Tauson was producing the most winners (see above).
At 2-3, 15-0 serving, Brady pushed Tauson again to the forehand corner, earning a short reply which she put away to the open court with her backhand. She followed that up with a strong wide serve to the deuce side, producing a similar result and leveled the set at 3-3 one point later. In the ensuing game at 30-30, Brady looked like she was on track to gain the lead when she once again stretched Tauson to her forehand corner and followed it up with a winner when Tauson’s reply fell short. She could not, however, take advantage of it when she returned the ball into the net on the following break point.
The problem for Brady, you see, was that Tauson is not some one-dimensional player who possesses only a single bag of tricks (read: strike every ball hard and aim for winners). She can hit angles as well from both wings and mix-in the occasional drop shot. On her serve, she has the ability to vary the amount of kick or slice. And lo and behold, she is not afraid to come to the net and use her fundamentally sound volleys (5 out of 8 on approaches to the net in the set). Brady forced Tauson to dig deep into her set of skills. Tauson responded by holding serve after a contested game that saw four deuces, thus halting the American’s progress.
Each player held serve one more time and the scoreboard showed Brady serving at 4-5. This is where Tauson rose to the occasion with the composure of a champion. She started the game with a booming return that Brady could not get back. Two points later, she struck her fourth backhand down-the-line winner to get the 15-30 lead. At 30-30, she came up with a drop-shot winner to earn a set point, where she finally received an assist from Brady who had been playing a clean game with only four unforced errors (my own count) until that moment. The American missed a backhand in the net on Tauson’s return.
Brady, too great a competitor to get discouraged, buckled down on her problem-solving dexterity and adopted an ultra-aggressive game plan to take away Tauson’s ability to direct traffic during rallies. She began pounding on returns at the cost of making mistakes (did not make many) in order to take charge from the get-go and not allow Tauson to continue generating power from comfortable spots.
Brady led 2-1 when Tauson called for a medical time-out due to an ailing thigh. When she emerged from the medical time-out with her upper left thigh bandaged, she was ready to go back to work, but the flow of high-octane shots by Brady coming her way eventually began to take their toll. Brady insisted on exploiting the wide forehand corner on Tauson’s side and took more risks on her second serves with successful results (see for example the last two second serves to the ad side in the 2-1 game, with Tauson having to strain to get them back whereas she was taking charge on second-serve returns in the first set).
Tauson began to show cracks in her game – totally acceptable, bound to happen at some point considering the circumstances from her perspective – toward the end of the set when she served at 3-5. She missed a makeable volley and hit a forehand sitter in the net, losing the set 6-3 on her tenth unforced error of the set.
Fast-forward to Tauson serving at 5-6 in the final set, when it looked like the exciting adventure was about to come to an end for her. She missed two forehand sitters in the net in the first four points to find herself down two match points at 15-40. Somehow, Tauson remained resolved and squeezed a return error out of Brady with her first serve to save one match point. Then, she got back to deuce after a terrific rally in which she fearlessly unleashed four huge shots (and another forehand down-the-line topspin that caught the back of the line), virtually beating an error out of Brady. For good measure, she hit a stellar forehand inside-out winner to equalize at 6-6.
It was all Tauson over the next five minutes or so, as she broke serve and earned her first match point at 7-6 serving, 40-15. She finally showed some signs of nerves, I presume, missing a forehand and a backhand deep in succession, allowing Brady to get back to deuce. She had another chance to put the match to rest two points later, but her drop-shot attempt ended in the net. On Brady’s second break-point chance, Tauson missed a short backhand when Brady’s floater skipped on the service line and bounced low. Just like that it was 7-7.
You would think that the 17-year-old would finally succumb to the magnitude of the moment and crumble away after squandering three chances to win the match, right? Wrong! Not Tauson.
She remained level-headed in a way that would make top players envious after the disappointment of the previous game and it was Brady who cracked with two unforced errors in a row at deuce, both landing deep, and giving Tauson a chance to serve for the match again at 8-7. Tauson did not let this game slip away. She saved a break point at 30-40 with her 48th winner of the match (yes, forty-eight!) and although another match point went by when Brady hit an amazing backhand cross-court winner, Tauson capitalized on her fifth one when she landed a first serve close to the “T” and Brady missed the forehand return wide.
Side notes:
— 48 winners to 38 for Tauson (official count says 46 unforced errors for Tauson) and 39 to 19 for Brady (official count says 25 for her unforced errors). Maybe not at the sky-high levels of the Osaka-Brady US Open semifinal that I mentioned in the beginning, but undoubtedly a quality match by any measure.
— I simply cannot rely on the official unforced-error count. Numbers have been significantly higher than in my counts in all four first-round matches I analyzed so far in this tournament. I’ve closely observed how the official count works. One example: a shot missed by a server following a hard return by the opponent ,landing inches away from the baseline, thus forcing the server to balance on their backfoot to hit a half-volley-like shot, is simply not an unforced error in my book. Another example: a return missed on a high-kicking second serve, one that forces the returner to strike above the shoulder level on a reach is not an unforced error.
— I cannot help but wonder why neither player gave a fair shot to the idea of using slice to see if they could collect errors from their opponent. Especially interesting that Brady stayed away from it so much (she has the shot in her arsenal), never forcing Tauson to hit a couple or three shots from the knee level or below.
— Tauson’s net stats are 14 out of 27, which makes me wonder if they take into account points where Tauson hit a potent shot, and seeing that Brady is on the run and is likely to float the next shot back, began moving to the net, but winning the point without having to volley because Brady’s retrieval never made it back on her side. I am fairly certain that Tauson’s attacking game had a better success rate than 52%.
Tauson takes on an another American next, the 57th-ranked Danielle Collins.