Sara Sorribes prevented this Sunday that what had been a full Spanish in the first round of the Mutua Madrid Open, with four tennis players from the Navy classified for the second, was reversed after the eliminations of Nuria Párrizas, Paula Badosa and Garbiñe Muguruza. The Castellón native who, depending on how you look at it, may have less tennis than the last two, has nothing to envy them in terms of competitiveness and caste. He demonstrated it with his second consecutive victory against Naomi Osaka (6-3 and 6-1 in 1h28), winner of four Grand Slams and former world numberwhich they beat two years ago in the Billie Jean King Cup, in the qualifying round for the 2020 Finals in which Spain beat Japan without Badosa or Muguruza, by the way.
Sara, who beat 15th-ranked Pavlyuchenkova last Friday, reaches the round of 16 of the tournament for the first time and He will face another Russian on Tuesday, Daria Kasatkina, a tennis player who trains in Barcelona and who gave the surprise by eliminating the fourth favorite, the Greek Maria Sakkari (3-6, 6-3 and 6-1). In 2015 he won it with a double donut, although he anticipates that “it will be a very complicated match.”
“I feel incredibly happy. I’ve been coming here for many years. I’ve always thought it was a place where I could play very well. I think I have played very good games, but these two have been the ones in which I have felt the best. I won’t say that my team and I deserved it, but we are very happy to be able to experience these things together”, said Sorribes, who only made three unforced errors. It was almost perfect, ‘kanzen’ in Japanese. “Blanca (her physio) has hesitated before saying that she was going to write down all the mistakes in a notebook and I told her, ‘you won’t be able to write down many’. She has gone through that”he joked.
It is true that clay is the surface on which Osaka performs worst (21-16 against her 134-56 on hard courts, with the semifinals of Stuttgart 2019 as the best result). And that the Japanese played with tapes in the left calf. But she had just won Potapova (6-3 and 6-1) with solvency and in the previous one she had said that her intention was to reach at least the penultimate round. So you can’t take away from what Sorribes did, who set up the match perfectly, with high balls and that sliced backhand that he executes so well and is his best weapon.
Teamwork
In the first set he broke Osaka’s serve three times and with his service he expertly endured against a rival who had ‘stolen’ Nadal’s way of subtracting against the advantage, reversing to return the ball forehand instead of backhand. He only had one break point. Sorribes achieved two of his four breaks in the match from 40-15, a fact that indicates his tenacity, the result of an exquisite work ethic that he shares with a great team led by coach Silvia Soler. In this way, he undermined the confidence of an Osaka that still cannot find the key to adapt his tennis to clay. Her coach, Wim Fissette, asked her to topspin more, not to play so flat. Sara saw it and put every ball in play until she scored another prestigious victory. And even if she doesn’t say it, she deserves it.