There were point penalties, warnings, foot faults, stiff-armed fist pumps, and cries in Russian. There were moonballs thrown up so high it seemed we might be back in 1981, but then two-fisted backhands and Western forehands brought us back to the present. There were screams after points won and after unforced errors. The crowd gasped and stared at the exclamations and laughed nervously.
Most of this drama came from the side of Daria Gavrilova, the top-seeded Russian in the U.S. Open junior girls? competition during her semifinal match against the 15th-seeded American Sloane Stephens. The two played on Court 7 on Saturday during the men?s semifinal matches, and I caught the third set after Rafael Nadal reached the final in a hurry.
You can?t judge a player by one final-set performance, but you can learn a lot about her. Stephens started the set well and was quickly up a break. Her serve looked strong, her ground strokes were hitting their marks, and she seemed capable of moving forward to finish off points. As for Gavrilova, however, think of a female version of Lleyton Hewitt. She thrives on drama and really fires herself up. If you aren?t a fan of grunting, look out: Gavrilova is a shrieker � la Victoria Azarenka and Michelle Larcher de Brito. I?d call her an all-court screamer: She does it at the point of contact, sometimes moments afterwards, sometimes not at all, and other times while hitting lobs.
I?ll give Gavrilova this: She knows how to win. She eventually defeated Stephens and went on to win the girls? title Sunday over fellow Russian Yulia Putintseva 6-3, 6-2. Whether you call it winning ugly, making your opponent win it, or getting into your opponent?s head, Gavrilova does it all. In the semifinals, she took all power off her shots, forced Stephens into long rallies, scrambled well, and made sure she was firmly entrenched in Stephens? head. Stephens? serve started to miss, her ground strokes often found the net, and she ended up on the losing end of a final-set tiebreaker.
It?s hard to judge juniors. They?re teenagers, after all. Stephens seems to have the game, she just needs to translate it to wins. Gavrilova is steady but seems to be preoccupied with playing head games.
But yesterday, at least, these juniors were a better warm-up act to Roger Federer vs. Novak Djokovic than were Nadal and Youzhny.
?David Rosenberg
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