“Oh, oh oh oh, oh God!”

"incredible!"

"Gao Wen fought back in an extremely passive situation and hit an ace on the serve, ending the point neatly."

"The situation has changed subtly."

"In the last game, Gao Wen was leading 40:0 in his serve game, but was tied by Istomin. In this game, Istomin was leading 30:0 in his serve game, but was tied by Gao Wen again. The atmosphere of the whole game was a bit subtle, and the mental fluctuations were very obvious."

“Wow!”

"Now the game has come to a critical moment. Although Istomin is still ahead, Gawain is gradually closing the gap. The situation is still unclear."

"The next point will be a test for both players."

"From a psychological perspective, Gao Wen is undoubtedly the best player among the new generation of players in terms of game reading and grasping ability. He knows how to seize opportunities."

"But the key point is that Istomin is the dominant player in this match from the perspective of form. This is his serve. We need to pay attention to one statistic. In today's match, he has not lost his serve, and even has very few break points, only three."

"So, what will the two players choose next?"

Buzz buzz buzz...

The entire Court No. 2 fell silent again after a brief period of bustle. Not a single sound could be heard. However, it was precisely this silence that made the tense and depressing atmosphere spread even more. The heart that was pounding against the chest seemed like it would explode at any moment, and a thin layer of sweat oozed out of the palms.

"30:30".

Istomin felt the crisis, not the kind of life-threatening situation, but the kind of situation that was gradually approaching. He could still save the situation and still change it, so he did not panic for the time being. Instead, he stood firm and launched a fierce counterattack. In the next point, he regained his offensive touch.

——Istomin firmly holds the upper hand.

In the first zone, the first serve was close to the goalkeeper, with a speed of 188 kilometers per hour. It found the line accurately and successfully squeezed Gawain, curbing Gawain's serve attack. The quality of the return serve was also unsatisfactory, but for Istomin, this was an offensive opportunity and he took action without hesitation.

As mentioned earlier, Istomin's strokes are similar to Djokovic's in some aspects, the most typical of which is that he lacks explosiveness.

Istomin's attack is not the type of ping-pong and fierce and powerful - of course, in terms of strength, he is better than Kei Nishikori, but his strength does not have the energy to burst out suddenly, it is often output continuously and evenly, so his attack often has a consistent rhythm.

In other words, there is a lack of combination of fast and slow, alternation of light and heavy, and the continuous output of power does not have the energy to defeat ten opponents with one force. In the end, it is necessary to form suppression through the distribution of landing points, and finally seek winning points by finding gaps and quick connections.

In this game, Gawain was slow to find his feel for the ball, so he was unable to put enough pressure on Istomin on both offense and defense, nor give Istomin enough room to play, which put himself in a passive position and allowed Istomin to score repeatedly.

However, in this round, Gawain changed his strategy slightly.

Fight.

In fact, grass courts are not suitable for grappling. This is the classic tactic of clay courts:

Rely on the control of the landing point to continuously send the tennis ball back to the opposite court; and rely on the combination of different hitting techniques to constantly test the opponent's offensive ability, accumulate and stack the offensive pressure through long rounds of tug-of-war, and finally find the gap for defensive counterattack to reverse the victory.

The same tactics, when applied on a grass court, become extremely difficult due to the low bounce and fast pace of the field, and it is easy to put oneself in a passive position.

To be precise, clay courts are suitable for a variety of styles. Although offensive players may be slightly weakened, they can still find a place to play. Grass courts are not like that. This is the world of offensive players. There is almost no room for defensive counterattack players to survive here.

It can be said to be extreme, but it can also be said to be vivid.

From the moment the grass court season began, Sampras repeatedly stressed that Gowan must forget all his clay court tactics and enter a new mode:

Attack, attack, and attack again.

Gao Wen did the same thing in the first two sets of today's match, but the results were not satisfactory, and the main problem was the feel of the ball.

Gao Wen is a player who relies on his brain to play, so he began to think about how to adjust his game.

He believed that Sampras's tactics were correct and that offense was the right way to play on a grass court. He was not prepared to overturn or deny this. Otherwise, even if he managed to reverse the situation and defeat Istomin to advance to the next round, he would still have to face the same problem in the next game.

However, if one's ball feeling is not good, a rash attack is like a headless fly. Not only will it be ineffective, but it will also put oneself in a passive position, just like Kyrgios in the Queen's Club Cup. Gawain did not even need to do anything, Kyrgios defeated himself.

Therefore, starting from the third set, Gao Wen consciously increased the entanglement of the round balls and adjusted the rhythm of the game through tactical combinations of baseline rounds.

On the one hand, he was looking for the feel of the ball and the feel of the offense; on the other hand, he was disrupting Istomin's rhythm and trying to get into his own comfort zone as much as possible.

The effect can be seen directly from the score. In the third set, Gao Wen's score reached five for the first time, which was a small improvement compared to the previous two sets.

Although the speed is not fast, Gao Wen is indeed exploring his own grass style.

Just like the clay court season, this requires a process, but this time, Gao Wen must continue to complete this process on the Wimbledon stage.

The latest novel is published first on Liu9shuba!

The sight returns to the present moment.

The tug-of-war was a situation that Gao Wen had deliberately created.

Gawain sensed Istomin's impatience and hoped to win the point and the game as quickly as possible, regain his footing, take the lead again, and put as much pressure on Gawain as possible.

Therefore, Gawain's first task was to drag out the game, allowing Istomin's turbulent emotions to continue to ferment and remain uneasy through such a tug-of-war.

Maybe he can get this point, maybe not; but what is more important than the score is the layout, he needs to shake Istomin's beliefs.

The round ball is formed in this way.

Originally, Istomin's attack did not have explosive power. If Gawain did not take the risk to attack, but curbed Istomin's attack by allocating the points of attack, then the back-and-forth tug-of-war could easily lead to a stalemate.

The grass court match was forcibly turned into a clay court match.

Back and forth.

Ten rounds.

You come and I go.

Fifteen rounds.

The stalemate continues.

In the blink of an eye, twentieth rounds had passed. Istomin was in complete control of the attack, but his routes and landing points were not threatening, so he was unable to create any gaps. Instead, he was mobilized by Gawain's landing points. The two figures ran all over the field, and the rounds back and forth always maintained a balance without breaking the balance.

It can be clearly felt that the air is slowly becoming sticky.

Twenty-fifth round, the stalemate continues!