MARTINA NAVRATILOVA
Q. Just analyze the women’s draw, how you thought it played out, yesterday’s two matches, obviously Maria’s progress, and maybe a little bit on Errani. And talk about Petra, too.
MARTINA NAVRATILOVA: Three out of four people that we thought would win the tournament were still in the semifinals. The top half was different, and the bottom half kind of went into disarray when Serena lost. I said from the start I think Maria has a very good chance to win if she doesn’t have to play Serena, because clearly she’s had a hard time with Serena in the past, but she’s had everybody else covered, winning record against everybody else. That’s how it played out. Serena lost early. If she had gotten through that first match, probably would be talking about a different French Open, but she didn’t. So the path opened for Maria. She’s played just amazing tennis. She had that one hiccup match against Zakopalova. She’s been dominating winning 80% of the games on her opponents’ serve, which is ridiculous. I think that will be the key to the final. Errani, as amazingly as she’d played and played really brave tennis, I just don’t see how it can be enough for Maria’s return of serve, which is her best shot, and Errani’s serve is her worst shot. So that’s a really bad matchup. When you talk about somebody that has a better chance of breaking their opponent’s serve than holding their own, in my eyes, then it’s not looking so good. But this is clay. Their nerves will be there, I’m sure, for both of them, with Errani having nothing to lose, everything to gain, and Maria has a lot to gain but a lot to lose, as well. So it’ll be interesting how the psyche plays out, but, you know, on paper Maria wins match, no doubt about it. They’ve never played each other, right? Yeah, first meeting, which amazing for the Grand Slam final, two people who have never played one another and, you know, hung out at Bollettieri’s at the same time. But Kvitova, I was disappointed with her effort. She’s been streaky all along, and yesterday the streakiness cost her the match. Maria handled the wind better. She’s got a little more margin for error. Kvitova, the streakiness, she gets away with it against players ranked lower, but against somebody like Maria, it’s going to cost her and it did. She would play a few good games, but then she’d have a bad game on her serve, and there is the set. She needs to clean up her game a little bit. I would still like for her to be a little bit quicker on her feet. In the wind, the better footwork won yesterday. Stosur doesn’t like the wind. Errani, clearly better footwork. Doesn’t bother her as much. The same with Sharapova/Kvitova. Better footwork on Sharapova’ part in the wind. That pays off. Anything else? Did I cover it pretty well?
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