Bartic bounces Baltacha
Number one seeded Brit Elena Baltacha was bounced out in the first round by Croatia’s Petra Martic with a final score of 2-6, 7-5, 6-3 in Round One of the Ladies’ Singles tournament at Wimbledon.
Baltacha’s confidence seemed to evaporate during her face-off with number 52 seeded Martic. Coming into Wimbledon with a considerably decent record, Baltacha was hoping she would be able to crack into the world’s top 50 by showing a good performance at Wimbledon, but instead, she ended up losing out to the lower ranked Croatian.
Baltacha has made it past the first round at Wimbledon four times out of her total eight attempts, which fueled her confidence at her prospects of doing it once again. She was relentless during the first two sets and served for the match at 5-4, having been in charge of the match up to that point. Yet losing sight of the ball for an instant, Baltacha dropped her serve, going on to lose the set and having to start over from scratch.
Just as Baltacha began to lose her confidence, Martic began to see the possibility of a victory.
The 19-year-old Croat had been hitting the ball with enough precision up to that point, yet she was unable to locate her target and ended up hitting the ball to unlikely places on the court. After taking an hour to figure out her strategy, she found her niche and took it away with six games, wrapping up the second set with a score of 3-0, leading her way into the third set.
Baltacha’s way to Wimbledon
Baltacha had been on a pretty good streak coming into Wimbledon. She had been a quarter-finalist at Eastbourne only a few days prior, and was moving up in the rankings steadily throughout the past year. Gaining more and more confidence as she progressed in the ranking, her comfort level with playing top-seeded players was high. It took Baltacha twelve years as a pro to end up on the inside of the world’s top 100, and she was set on making the most of it once she achieved this landmark in her career.
Since making it into the world’s top 100, Baltacha no longer had to qualify for Grand Slam events, nor did she have to wait for wild card invitations into the big tournaments. She was now playing with the best, and felt like she belonged there. Yet after running into Martic, her dreamworld was shaken.
Martic shakes it up
Baltacha is known for being emotionally explosive, but has learned over time to control her nerves on the court and has employed the advice of her coach, Nino Severino, who has instructed her in the art of “visualization”. This theory claims that repeatedly picturing what it would be like to be facing Venus Williams at match point, or to be winning at break point against Clijsters, would make it easier to bring those desired results to fruition, once the player finds herself in the actual situation on court in real life. Manifest destiny, if you will.
Unfortunately, no amount of visualization had prepared Baltacha for her encounter with the fierce Croatian. As Martic began to relax and ease into her game, she produced flowing ground strokes that threatened Baltacha’s confidence. After firing eight aces and four service winners, she made Baltacha clearly unhappy. When she finally won the match after a painstaking two hours and nine minutes, Martic witnessed Baltacha hurrying off the court.
Having mercilessly beaten Baltacha, Martic will face Bartoli in the next round, much to her own self-amazement, and to hapless chagrin of Baltacha.
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