BNP Paribas 2012 – Women’s 1st Round Qualifying

Written by: Staff on 5th March 2012

BNP Paribas 2012 - Women's 1st Round Qualifying

Olga Govortsova of Belarus returns the ball during her women's singles second round match against Anabel Medina Garrigues of Spain on the third day of the Australian Open Grand Slam tennis tournament in Melbourne, Australia, 18 January 2012. EPA/MAST IRHAM |

The 2012 BNP Paribas Open officially started today with opening round qualifying matches on the WTA side. Men’s qualifying starts on March 6th. The day started a little out of the ordinary for Palm Desert. There was a lot of cloud cover and it was relatively brisk weather around 8am this morning. Upon arriving at the site today, there were already players warming up for their 10am start times. I was particularly interested in Olga Govortsova’s match on Court 7, one of the many outer stadium/show courts at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden. The courts are very slow here and the balls get fluffed up incredibly; You can literally see all the ball fuzz collecting on the players’ shoes as they maneuver around the court.

Olga’s match against Sesil Karatantcheva (KAZ) was a doozy. Ups and downs, an emotional rollercoaster at times. Things really became difficult to watch during the 2nd set tiebreak. Olga was up a set and 6-1 in the tiebreak.. That’s 5 match points. She got tighter, and tighter, and tighter with each error until it was officially tied up. A crazy “circus” point as I’d like to call it with high-flying lobs, cannon like forehands, and topsy-turvy movement all over the court left Karatantcheva clenching a fist as Olga dumped an overhead into the net. Credit to Karatantcheva grinding it out and dashing around trying to force an unforced error from Olga. My coach Zibu (who’s also coaching Olga), Olga’s nutritionist from Herbalife April, and mutual friend and mogul Chris Ho were all in shock for a few moments following – Karatantcheva meanwhile won the tiebreak on another O.G. error.

But Olga kept her wits about her even though her nerves had betrayed her. She took a bathroom break, calmed down, and started off the third set with a solid hold of serve. At 2-1 on serve, she called for a coach’s timeout and Zibu raced across the court from his seat to give her some tips and settle her down. She said she couldn’t hit the ball because she was so nervous but Zibu is a wise and assertive coach and told her: “Focus on your return. A rabbit is faster than this girl’s serve, step inside the purple (the court) on her second serve because she double faults when she sees you inside the court.”

Sure enough Olga was back to playing the power tennis I was used to seeing her dish out on me during our practice sessions. Karatancheva started double faulting, A LOT. Every single time O.G. saw a second serve and took a step inside the baseline, Karatancheva floated her 2nd serve long. With that boost of confidence and a more solid resolve to focus on that first strike off the return games, O.G. was able to hit through her own shots and hold enough times to win the match 6-2 in the third. One thing is clear however, O.G. liked to show her emotions even when she was winning. For instance, when she was up 3-1 in the third set, rolling with all the momentum, she lost a simple baseline rally where Karatancheva stepped up and truly bested her in a rally. O.G. was complaining, swinging her racket at invisible balls and talking in Russian – Signs of mental fatigue and reasons for Karatancheva to step up, become more confident, and start playing better tennis! This is something she can definitely work on and because she’s a smart and mature player, will get the hang of and realize sooner rather than later.

I will update you with what’s going around the site later tonight!

Shubert