Heather Watson had gained direct entry into the US Open for the first time based on her ranking alone.  Today she played her first match, her season has been going very well  to this point.  Her opponent was Sorana Cirstea whose form going into the US Open had been iffy at best.  Heather didn't get off to the best of starts here and only managed to hold her serve once in the first set.  Heather was serving too many double faults and handed breaks to Sorana on a couple of occasions with weak serving, which went 6-1 against Heather

Moving into the second set and Heather needed to step this if she was going to pull this back and take the match to a deciding set.  This was not the day she wanted, as her serve deserted her even more in the second set.  Heather just seemed to tighten up and get really nervous, whereas Sorana had nothing to loose even though she had been poor in prior tournaments.  Sorana should never be written off, and this proved to be the case today as she forced Heather to go for more shots and miss them.  This set also went 6-1.

Heather may wish that court 13 had hawkeye as a couple of her shots were called out, but could have been in if she had been allowed challenges, this seemed to dent her confidence though and she could only hold her serve twice in the whole match.  So there are no Brits left in the ladies singles, but Heather does have another chance as she is playing ladies doubles here.

VAVEL Logo
About the author