Puerto Rico’s #1 tennis star Monica Puig displayed some of her best brand of first strike tennis to get the better of former World No.1 Caroline Wozniacki 4-6 6-3 6-4 in the third round of Eastbourne,
The grass court season has proved to be a rewarding period of the season for Puig, first making the semi-finals in Nottingham, where she blitzed her way through every opponent before coming up short to Karolina Pliskova. Courtesy of winning today’s marathon match against Wozniacki she now progresses to the Quarter-Final stage and is one of the dangerous unseeded players coming into the Championships at Wimbledon.
Puig, declared her prowess on a fast grass court when she beat No.5 player Sara Errani in the first round of Wimbledon 6-3 6-2. In that year she would go on to make the Round of 16 – her first and only second week of a grand slam to date.
In the early periods of the match, Puig showed what she is capable of on a grass court when she took the early break lead. The Puerto-Rican held five break points at 3-2* in the first set but every break point opportunity came and went. That proved to be the turning point of the first set as Wozniacki grabbed the break in the following game to go up *4-3 and eventually take the set 6-4.
The second set saw Puig take another early break, but got pegged back by the Dane. Towards the closing moments of the second set was an example of just how good Puig is when she is feeling great about her game. Puig took the second set 6-3 and subsequently the match as she was rewarded for her persistence on sticking to her original game plan as she explained in her post match press conference.
“Well, I think just the way I was aggressive there at the end. You know, it’s never easy also to close out a match when you’re serving, especially when it’s 5-4. You know, anything can happen, and then all of a sudden you’re 5-5, fighting to get your lead back. Just the way I stayed with my game plan the whole way and the way that I was just extremely positive throughout the match.”
Puig’s streaky, and sometimes, inconsistent game became evident as she served out the match. On the first match point she double faulted then that was shortly followed by an ace down the middle. Puig talked thoroughly about what was going on in her mind following those pressurized moments at the hardest period of the match.
“I was praying for an ace, to be honest (laughter). You know, you just get to match point. Even though you’re 40-15 up, there is still always the nerves because the other player might play much looser and she can all of a sudden hit one or two winners. Because it’s happened to me in the past. I was just thinking I just need to get the first serve in the court, so a double fault wasn’t the way I wanted to start the first one. I was just praying for that ace on the second one. I was kinda lucky it went right on the T.”
Another interesting take from Puig’s press conference was her initial thoughts on knowing she had qualified for the Olympic games for the first time in her career.
“Yeah it was a huge pressure for me actually at the French Open. My coach was like, don’t worry. You’re going to qualify. Just don’t think about it. Obviously there were so many people fighting for that last few positions there at the French. I put a lot of pressure on myself, but I was lucky enough to get to the third round and secure my place. You know, that was just a main focus for me at the beginning of the year. I didn’t really have a shot at qualifying for the team, being almost outside the top 100. And all of a sudden being able to qualify and my ranking still going up, it’s something really special. But for me, representing my country at the Olympic Games is always something I’ve wanted to do, and I know I’m going to enjoy that moment as much as everybody else is, you know, but it’s going to be very memorable being my first Olympic Games.”
Monica Puig faces Kristina Mladenovic in the Aegon International Quarter-Finals tomorrow.
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