20 Nov 2003 - Olympic Stadium, Moscow, RUS - Alex Nicholas
RUS v FRA
Mauresmo Puts France 2-1 up Against Russia
World No. 4 Amelie Mauresmo has played an impressive game of tennis today to
defeat No. 7 Anastasia Myskina 67(3) 63 64 in 2 hours 16 minutes and put the
French team 2-1 up in their semifinal encounter with Russia.
Both Mauresmo and Myskina treated the 7000-strong crowd to a magnificent
display or shot-making of the highest calibre in by far the most competitive
rubbers of the event so far.
This was the fifth occasion that the two have met at tour-level and going
into the match Mauresmo was 3-1 up in the series. Importantly, however,
Myskina won their last meeting in Moscow – at the 2003 Kremlin – and was
hoping for another win in front of her home supporters today.
The first set got off to a shaky start with both players dropping their
opening service games. Myskina was then broken again in her second service
game to go 3-1 down, but, cheered on by a passionate home crowd, she broke
back to level the match. Both players really found their groove in the latter
half of the first set, and a fascinating contest between two starkly
different playing styles began to unfold.
Mauresmo, with her trademark topspin backhand, and Myskina, with her famous
flat forehand, battled hard to take the first set down to a tiebreak. The two
players exchanged points at the start, but Myskina finally got the upper hand
when she strung together a run of impressive net plays to clinch the breaker
7-3.
The second set was just as hotly contested as the first, with both players
exchanging sublime ground-strokes from the back of the court. As in the first
set, breaks of serve were exchanged in the first two games, but a crucial
second break for the 24-year-old French woman came in the fourth game. She
managed to consolidate this break with three solid service games to take the
set 6-3.
The final set went much the same way as the previous two. Rallies were hard
fought, first- serve percentage was high, and tactical awareness was sharp.
Indeed, there was very little to separate the two players - Mauresmo’s sweet
backhand drives were met with Myskina’s fierce forehands, and whenever one
player looked to be getting a slight upper hand, the other would immediately
fight back.
In the end, it came down to perhaps greater mental toughness from the 1999
Australian Open runner-up, who refused to let the boisterous crowd get to
her. She broke the Myskina serve – which has always been the chink in her
armoury – in the ninth game of the set, and served out the set – and with
it the match – 6-4.
This win puts Mauresmo 51-15 for the season and improves her Fed Cup record
to an impressive 15-4 in singles rubbers. The Frenchwoman seems to thrive on
the thrill of playing for her country and has proved here in Moscow to be a
very difficult player to contend with.
“Yeah it was pretty exciting… We had a good fight,” said Mauresmo. “I
kept fighting and really kept going forward. Overall it was a good game and
I think people enjoyed it.”
With this win, France has put itself within one point of victory over home
nation Russia and thus a place in the 2003 Fed Cup Final. They have only
once before played in a Final of the premier annual team competition in
women’s sport – back in 1997 – when Yannick Noah steered his team to a
4-1 victory over the Netherlands.
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