Chapter 1214 Clay Debut
Previously, it was mentioned that in 2017, Pouille became another player who won all titles across different types of surfaces, and he was also the third player born in the 1990s after Dimitrov and Thiem; and after him, it took another five years for another player to achieve such a feat.
From this we can see that Pouille can perfectly adapt to different venues. His batting style and game type enable him to open up the situation on different types of courts.
In fact, Pouille's favorite court is hard court. The best performance in his career was at the Australian Open, and the first breakthroughs in his career were at Wimbledon and the US Open.
On the contrary, at the French Open, his best result in his career was only two third rounds.
This shows that Puy is a player who is more suitable for fast courts.
But is this really the case? Before reaching the semi-finals at the 2019 Australian Open, Pouille's career record at the Australian Open was five first-round exits and a single win was hard to come by.
Before and after his breakthroughs at Wimbledon and the US Open, Pouille generally reached the second and third rounds here.
As for the French Open, although he has never been able to break through the third round and was eliminated in the first round four times, he has the most wins at the French Open among the four Grand Slams.
In other words, Pouille's personal preference is indeed for fast courts; but his playing style is indeed universal, and he performs well on any court; at the same time, he grew up on clay, and although he is not good at it, his understanding and habits of clay are still engraved in his batting swing.
In Monte Carlo, Pouille was able to defeat the future "Little Prince of Clay" Thiem, which is the best proof.
For Gao Wen, although he missed the chance to meet Thiem on clay, he still needs to go all out in the match against Pouille, and his mentality must be right.
On hard ground, there is no need to adapt or adjust. It is all about your opponent and yourself.
On clay, in addition to the opponents, the venue and environment will also become part of the game. Everything is new, and the mentality is naturally different.
In fact, to be precise, this was not Gao Wen's first clay court debut in the strict sense of his career, but the first round of the doubles tournament.
Before entering the singles arena, the doubles partnership of Gao Wen and Dimitrov had already appeared at the Monte Carlo Masters, making their debut on clay.
In the first round of doubles, the Gao Wen combination faced another young combination of "post-90s": Henri-Kontinen from Finland, born in 1990; Marin-Draganja from Croatia, born in 1991.
Both players have been in the professional arena for some years, but unfortunately, their singles performance was mediocre, so they began to think about the future of their careers. It was around this time last year that they both turned to doubles, hoping to make a name for themselves here and continue their professional careers.
Being so young, he has already completely given up singles, which indirectly shows that he really cannot continue, and he cannot even make a breakthrough in the challenge stage; but at the same time, because he is young, he dares to fight and has the support of a partner in the doubles arena, slowly accumulating experience, which is indeed a way out.
From this match, it can be seen that Dimitrov's state of mind has indeed changed and he has become more proactive; on the contrary, it was Gawain who seemed a little restrained in his first official match on clay, so Dimitrov took over the initiative and controlled the match, which was different from Indian Wells.
at last--
“6:1”, “6:3”.
The "duo" of Gawain and Dimitrov started their journey smoothly, and the whole game took less than 90 minutes before they got off to a good start with a complete victory.
Victory is always a good thing; but for Gao Wen, the only regret is that he had too little time to hit the ball on the court and was not able to adapt well enough.
Therefore, it will still take some time for Gao Wen to switch from doubles to singles.
The first game directly proved that clay and hard court are actually two different worlds.
Although they are both tennis, the content of the entire game is very different; moreover, the practice match and the official match are two different things, the intensity difference! "40:0".
In the opening serve game, Pouille easily won four points in a row and held his serve in a "love-game" without encountering any challenges.
Gao Wen obviously hasn't figured anything out yet. The route, landing point, and method of returning the ball are not clear enough, which means he hasn't thought it through.
Next, it was Gao Wen's serve.
"40:40".
Although Gao Wen saved two break points by covering his serve, he never saw the game point, and was broken by Pouille with a forehand straight line.
In a blink of an eye, the score of the first set was already "2:0", with Puy taking the lead.
Of course, Gao Wen has faced such difficulties more than once on hard courts, but for completely different reasons. Here, on clay, everything is unfamiliar.
Gao Wen, don't panic.
If you just look at the score, there is nothing to be nervous about. The game is long and there is still a lot of time. There is no need to panic because of a break. Moreover, compared to hard courts, the serve advantage is weakened on clay, so breaks are more common on clay courts and there are still opportunities later.
What Gao Wen really cares about is the content of the game.
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Puy, as expected—
First, he has an outstanding ability to use the opponent's force to play against him, and he also has the ability to actively exert force on his own. His forehand is sharp, but Pouille's style is not entirely based on muscle power. Instead, he relies on increasing the speed of the racket head to increase the rhythm of the shot, which is somewhat similar to Murray, relying on speed to create suppression.
The second is his outstanding ability to grab the hitting point. Overall, this is Puy's style. According to the bounce height of the return ball, he can grab the attack in his own style and way at any time.
He is 185 cm tall, which is not very tall, but taller than Kei Nishikori, so he does not need to work as hard as Kei Nishikori, and his physical fitness is also stronger, which means that he can easily increase the pace of the game, the faster the better, and he really enjoys the fast back and forth collisions.
Of course, the premise is that he relies on speed to suppress the opponent, forcing him into a trap, and returns the ball according to his own design, omitting the time for prediction; otherwise, once the opponent finds an opportunity to break the routine, he will fall into a passive position. What does this show? Pouille is a player with very strong tactical design. He has an instinct to lay out the speed and line of tennis in a flash and improve the whole rhythm; but at the same time, Pouille is also a player who lacks inspiration and changes. He only has one set of tactics and no alternative tactics. Once the tactical routine is disrupted, the situation will be overturned.
Therefore, Puyi simply kept speeding up, speeding up, and speeding up again, but his on-the-spot response was far less varied than Kei Nishikori's.
In addition, not only Puy, but Gawain himself also needs to reflect on himself.
If it is hard court, Gao Wen can often create pressure and break the balance by pressing deeper into the landing point of the ball, but this method does not work on clay.
Firstly, the speed of the ball slows down; secondly, after the ball lands deeper, the bounce height also gives the opponent time to react.
Especially when facing a player like Pouille, who can grab the hitting point no matter what the return ball is, and subtly hide the rhythm changes in his ever-speeding hitting rounds, the hard court tactics are useless.
So, what should Gawain do?
The first singles match on clay court brought a whole new experience.
(End of this chapter)