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It’s Timea’s time: she defeats Venus Williams at French Open

By Gale Moorman

Sep 1, 2016; New York, NY, USA; Timea Bacsinszky of Switzerland hits to Varvara Lepchenko of the United States on day four of the 2016 U.S. Open tennis tournament at USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. Mandatory Credit: Jerry Lai-USA TODAY Sports
Sep 1, 2016; New York, NY, USA; Timea Bacsinszky of Switzerland hits to Varvara Lepchenko of the United States on day four of the 2016 U.S. Open tennis tournament at USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. Mandatory Credit: Jerry Lai-USA TODAY Sports /
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Timea Bacsinszky came in as a pure underdog, seeded No. 30 compared to Williams at No. 10. With no Grand Slam titles, she used heart and determination.

The opening set looked as though Timea Bacsinszky had the match on her racket.

Leading 5-1 in the first set, she looked comfortable and confident over Venus Williams. But, she somehow took her lead for granted.

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"She admits that “The first set I had a big lead but I started making catastrophic errors”."

Williams had crawled and dug her way furiously back using simple strategies to come up to 4-5. Bacsinszky became a bit unnerved of her opponent’s new aggression and allowed her to win the first set 7-5.

Bacsinszky didn’t want to let up and must have kept the memory in her head of beating Williams last year at exactly this time in the 4th round of the French. She poured her tactics on heavy, they exchanged powerful cross court after cross court shots but it was Bacsinszky who put a bit more spice in her strokes with slicing and dropshotting to win points.

Venus started piling on unforced errors partially allowing Bacsinszky to win the second set at 6-2.

"But it was after the match that Venus had given her a lot of credit saying “I think she just played well. She had so many answers today…I just give her credit for playing well every point, even in the first set”."

Williams had a lot to do also with Bacsinszky’s win by not being able to control those errors. Wth no one knowing if it was nerves or Williams was just tired, her game was taking a spiral turn downward.

Bacsinszky felt it was an honor to play Williams, an icon of the WTA at 36 years of age and 7 career grand slam singles and so many doubles titles in her resume. But the 4th round is quite a deja vu for Bacsinszky as this year she had to retire from the BNP Paribas Indian Wells at the 4th round of the 1st set with a left wrist injury. She also holds 4 WTA single titles and who knows if the way she’s going, the French Open may be her 5th.

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