Your Late Call, 2.8
[Hi everyone. By request, here's a short report on this weekend's Fed Cup tie between Ukraine and Israel, from TW regular commenter mick1303. He attended the first two rubbers of the tie in his home city of Kharkov -- Rosangel]
By mick 1303, TW Guest Writer
This weekend's Fed Cup tie was held in the Locomotive Palace of Sports. Tickets cost less than 10 dollars, but even so, about 30% of the 2500 seats were empty – testament to how poor Ukraine is now. Only the balcony was filled – the tickets here cost just over one dollar.
At the start I immediately spotted the familiar face of Carlos Ramos. He was measuring the net, then sneaked the ball into the hood of the ballgirl, who was distracted and not paying attention to him. It turned out that he was umpiring the second rubber.
The first rubber: Alyona Bondarenko vs. Tsipora Obziler. The Israeli player is 35. She looks extremely in shape, but later in the match became overwhelmed in the longer rallies. The play looked close where the score was concerned, but Alyona kept it this way by making a ton of unforced errors without even going for too much. In the first set there was one memorable sharp-angled flicker forehand that she made for a winner.
Obziler has more variety in her game; she hits some slices and tries to dictate, but makes too many errors. After a series of breaks, Alyona managed to hold for 4-2, and that decided the first set. The second was a bit of a lull in the match, but at the business end of the set the elder Bondarenko raised the tempo and that was it. It probably could have been quicker, if she hadn't played so passively on the return, camping 3-4 feet behind the baseline against the non-threatening serve of the Israeli. Also I was begging her (in my head) when she had Obziler stretched, just to play a safe off-pace angle, which would have been enough. But of course she had to go for a drive to the corner, which ended up in the net or three feet out more often than not.
The second rubber: Kateryna Bondarenko vs. Shahar Peer. Even during the warm-up for the second rubber it felt like a more closely contested affair. Almost all of the games in the first set went to multiple deuces. Peer hits a slightly cleaner ball, her return was sharper, and she is also able to redirect down the line from both wings, while Kateryna can only do this off the backhand. If the rally went longer than 3-4 shots, the basic strategy of the Israeli was to target the forehand of Kateryna, and when the latter was stretched to unload down the line. Unfortunately I didn’t spot any visible strategy in any of Bondarenko's games. Kateryna was able to concentrate for a couple of good attacking points, but then again errors followed.
In the middle of the second set it appeared that Kateryna was giving up, but the audience carried her, and in addition Peer started to play too cautiously. In the second-set tiebreak again Peer waited for errors, which didn’t come. This led to a third set, which I correctly called in favor of the Israeli.
My forecast after day 1 – second day singles to also be split, with Shahar Peer winning against Alyona Bondarenko. Ukraine to clinch the tie in doubles. [Ed. note - that's exactly what happened.]
I was pleasantly surprised to see how cleanly Carlos Ramos was able to speak Russian. Granted, it is limited to calling the score and hushing the audience, but still – how many languages the guy speaks! He also showed his playful side in between ties. I saw that when most of the audience had left for refreshments he was juggling with tennis balls.
Unfortunately, as frequently happens with me, I didn’t check my camera batteries and took two nearly-discharged sets with me. So once I started to take some pictures, the red light popped up. This is one of the pictures that I managed to take before this happened.