Petra Martic

[janie]

1991 late bloomer? She has taken out 2 seeds so far this RG. What is it that she's doing so well? I only saw a few points of her match against Cake.

[lexpretend]

She seemed kinda talented-but-lightweight when she first hit the scene a few years ago (I remember first seeing her upset Witchmayer - Paris Indoors, 2010). Then she slumped and slumped and I wrote her off. But I was seriously impressed by her in the first half of the Kuala Lumpur final against Hsieh this year - I assume the quality of her play was partly driven by desperation but she was slamming winners, hitting perfect drop shots at will etc - she could pretty much do everything. Her results don't really indicate she can bring that A game consistently but she does have skillz.

[Old Hag]

The Cake win was expected because she's been hurt and sucking lately and clay is bad for her. And AMG apparently was injured too.

I like Martic's game a lot. Nice serve, good variety, her weakness is she doesn't hit big and doesn't use her height. She'll probably be a late bloomer as she's so thin now.

[Iorix]

Martic's instincts are those of a counterpuncher. Much like Barthel before Mona went full ballbasher. Or McHale. Can't really impose herself over her opponents due to lack of raw power, particularly on return - serve on the other hand is good enough to allow her to play more aggressively. Fun to watch due to her touch and fabulous court sense when she's isn't facing grinders who will force her to rally - then bad stuff will tend to happen because her shaky FH won't hold up.

Surprised she took out AMG - you'd think that was a bad matchup for her.

[lexpretend]

That's pretty much what I thought until I saw the Hsieh match - she was dictating from the first strike, even with the FH, against an opponent whose strategy was to make her run.

Like I said, though, that was probably desperation rather than her usual game. But it showed that she can do it if she wants.

[janie]

Thanks, everyone. I liked what I saw in the Cake match. I was near the end of the match yet Petra didn't succumb to that horrible WTA tendency to try to protect a lead by turning all passive and waiting for the miss. I was impressed. But it made me wonder, if she plays so fearlessly, keeps the ball so deep and is not afraid to go for the big shot when the time is right, why has it taken so long for her to show all this at a big tournament? I guess Old Hag is right and she's just a late bloomer, just coming into her own now.

Of course now we'll expect more consistency from her, and that's probably not ever a good idea.

[Edna Krabappel]

I found my (now almost 4 years old ) report on Martic that I had posted in the Hidden World thread!

Martic def. Meusburger 6-2 2-6 6-2

Martic comes from the town of Split, just like Ivanisevic and Ancic. Like them, she's also tall and lanky. She also has a big serve. Must be something in the water there.
As I said, her serve is good, at least for this level, strong and accurate and it gets her a lot of free points. The first set was quality stuff from her, very consistent hitting from the baseline, bossing Meusburger around until she got an opening or a good angle to finish off the point. The problem was that she was obviously getting tired after a few games and her game collapsed in the second set with a flurry of errors. In the third set the level of play was quite low on both sides, but Martic's better serving and Meusburger's pathetic 2nd serve that Petra kept crushing decided the outcome of the match.
Meusburger is just a pusher, and is not one of those superfit, ultra-fast pushers that get to every ball. Her game basically consists of hitting medium-paced shots from side to side and gradually putting more pace on the ball as the rally goes on trying to force an error from the opponent. I guess it works on challenger level, but it's no wonder she had no success on WTA tour, at least outside tier IVAs.

Martic looks promising, but there is still more work to be done. She absolutely needs to get fitter and put more meat on her bones. And tactically she's very raw, many times she'd absolutely dominate a rally and instead of stepping forward and finishing it off, she'd go back behind the baseline and exchange moonballs with Yvonne. She also hit many stupid drop shots that either didn't cross the net or if they did, she didn't follow them through and Meusburger would just successfully drop-shot back. I guess it has to do with Petra not being match-tough yet, as she had a lot of problems with injuries this year.
She has some potential, that's for sure. Also, she's about to start working with Zoltan Kuharszky.

[janie]

Great! Thanks, Joana. Looks like she's improved quite a bit since then. I did see her step forward and finish off points against Cake, and she didn't look tired at the end.

[Traveling Man]

I still haven't seen her play but have kept an eye out for her since reading Lex's posts from the Kuala Lumpur thread about how impressed he was with her game.