Is Simona Halep Driving the Right Vehicle to Wimbledon?

No, I am not talking about Simona's Porsche  ...

I am talking about this result:

Birmingham 2015

Mladenovic beats Halep in the quarterfinals
2-6 6-0 7-6(4)

and quite deservedly: she showed variety - in slices, dropshots (none on Halep's side), many more net trips (and volleying some; I remember volleys from Halep in just one hot exchange).

Mladenovic has considerably improved lately, and perhaps now some of us will recognize that Bouchard losing to her wasn't that bad.

Halep loses for the 1st time this year as a (1) seed, and while recognizing Mladenovic's obvious good form, this should not have happened. And this is why:

Halep/Team Halep used again the bad strategy, IMO: fighting the power player with uniform power (when obviously she isn't generating the hardest shots out there), instead of variety. She lost two matches with Lucic playing this way. Hasn't nothing at all registered?

She didn't change the contact point of the opponent with slices (at all) or high topspin (not enough), didn't introduce elements of surprise with dropshots or occasional S/Ving. Mladenovic was tuned in onto an unvaried pace and kind of shot reliably fed by Halep. Halep let the opponent play the variety card, instead of taking the initiative to play it herself, as she did this year with Wozniacki, who came to the net much more in Stuttgart, or Cornet. She didn't shock Mladenovic with power or placed returns (not enough DTL returns in that respect). She allowed herself to be too comfortable for the opponent, her kind of "ball" was predictable. Losing many mano-a-mano crosscourt FH exchanges didn't wake up to the reality of the day on the court.

There was no plan B to speak of, clearly. There is no progress on this issue since the days of Adrian Marcu coaching her two years ago.

Halep is happily and fortunately in good physical shape, and her recovery in the 3rd showed good fighting spirit. However, she's running the wrong car/strategy.
Perhaps Virginia Ruzici, her manager, and a former great Romanian player herself, should follow up on her own idea I heard of, of taking Simona for a session with Justine Henin at her academy for a master's class. Even next week isn't too late. Simona has the all ingredients - the shots are there, the hands are great, but the recipe is wrong, for she isn't using them, all those components, or not enough, or not in the right order. And Justine Henin would be a  great choice as she was herself a great player who, while being even a tad smaller than Simona, came to master an all-court strategy able to beat the power players based on variety elements I mentioned in the above.

On the positive side, her serve has markedly improved recently to its better incarnation. Her return though isn't opportune enough, as she herself has recognized. One reason: there is not enough body going into the shot, stepping in, translation.

Stepping into short balls was today much Mladenovic's domain, and in doing that she just followed a line that e.g. Muguruza has successfully administered Halep.

Both players have accumulated enough matches to be OK for Wimbledon and in that Birmingham has been thoroughly useful, but again, for me Halep is traveling in the wrong vehicle, one that will take much more effort to win in the big venue to come.

As one can see in the recording in the 2nd set
at 1-0 for Mladenovic, with Halep serving, she sent the ball 4 times into the net, out of which 2 were elementary situations.
Then Mladenovic came to the net to finish the point, and finished it quite well, with a volley.

I feel this was an unexpected drop in attention on the part of Halep after the success in the 1st which turned around the match.

Now as to the reasons for this, AlexT's (from the Tennis Talk forum) "Only she knows" is as good as an answer as any, but the situation points to [major] lapses of concentration.

The only explanation that would work in her favor for today's debacle:

She planned the whole thing herself (and considering she's got enough grass practice already) in order to mimic Kvitova, who retired from Eastbourne after two official matches on grass last year, only to win Wimbledon thereafter.

Too remote? I think so :-[

Anyway, congratulations to Mladenovic for a great game.

Marius Hancu

Montreal, Canada

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Published in comments at
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