Lob and Smash
Fansided

Heather Watson comes out swinging to defeat Zanevska at Wimbledon

By Gale Moorman

LONDON, ENGLAND - JULY 03: Heather Watson of Great Britain plays a forehand during the Ladies Singles first round match against Maryna Zanevska of Belgium on day one of the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Championships at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club on July 3, 2017 in London, England. (Photo by Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)
LONDON, ENGLAND - JULY 03: Heather Watson of Great Britain plays a forehand during the Ladies Singles first round match against Maryna Zanevska of Belgium on day one of the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Championships at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club on July 3, 2017 in London, England. (Photo by Clive Brunskill/Getty Images) /
facebooktwitterreddit

Heather Watson is getting off to a good start. She defeats Maryna Zanevska at Wimbledon 2017 and continues to advance at the Grand Slam.

Aggressiveness, consistency and confidence are characteristics good players can maintain. When they do it breeds success, when they don’t, frustration develops.

Watson had slipped out of the world’s top 100 and did manage to reach the semifinals at Eastbourne in June. She tried to maintain her skill and tactics until now but many times it was a difficult time she had being consistent.

More from Lob and Smash

Many times her serve had let her down in the past. With this match though, she had a great performance at that end, something she’ll need to continue in the coming rounds.

Every player, great or not highly ranked, gets on the court and has a bit of butterflies fluttering with nervousness. Heather Watson might have had a few but her first set was done brilliantly and with constant groundstrokes.

She was also serving strong and making powerful shots that her opponent Maryna Zanevska had difficulty handling. Watson not only took Zanevska out of her element, but just barrelled through the first set soon to lead 5-0.

This might have been unlike Watson who often started off a bit slow and then builds to a crescendo; but this spark started from the beginning. Zanevska wouldn’t let her get away with that nonsense and crawled her way up by being more aggressive to a 5-1 deficit. Watson kept her foot to the blades of slippery grass speeding when needed to gather another game and win the first set at 6-1.

In the second set, Watson and Zanevska had their ups and downs. Frustration was traded for aggression as the Brit who came through after a tough tiebreaker to push forward, taking care of not having unforced errors mar her game.

Next: Top 10 Men's Singles Players in Open Era

It should work well for Watson if she can keep that aggressive stance in play at the next round and she’ll be alright to see success. When Watson is dialed in, no one can easily defeat her and she needs to remain focused to let that happen just as in this first round at Wimbledon.

It was nice to see her taking and determining her shots and this was done well with Zanevska. Good strategy, serving and tactics and the rest was history for Watson as she had overthrown the Belgian and won the match 6-1, 7-6 getting through to the opening round and on to round two in fine brilliant fashion.

Home/Wimbledon