The No. 6 seed and 2015 Aegon Classic doubles winner, Garbiñe Muguruza, survived a serious and stern examination from her opponent as she edged a three-set win to progress to the second round of the Aegon Classic.
Coming into the match, Muguruza talked about her desire to “disconnect” from tennis following her Roland-Garros fourth round finish, having faced a lot of pressure to perform as defending champion. Her first match on the grass could not have been any tougher.
The moments where an inspired Elizaveta Kulichkova stroked winner after winner from both wings, it looked like the 2016 Roland-Garros champion was in heaps of trouble. Could the Spaniard really respond to this sort of adversity on a first match on grass? It was asking a lot.
It took six games for the first break point to be drawn. Muguruza managed to convert straight away to take a 4-2 lead and would subsequently go on to take the set comfortably, 6-3.
The second set is where it got considerably tricky. Kulichkova applied her high-risk, low-margin brand of tennis, and was in control of a lot of the points throughout the duration, which is crazy to say against a player that holds as much power in tennis as Muguruza.
The Russian played a phenomenal match. She lacks consistency, but gaining momentum from three match-wins in qualifying really made a difference as she took the second set against the much higher-ranked Muguruza to take it to a third set.
At that moment, you would think that Muguruza was on the ropes. Kulichkova decided the majority of the rallies, so you felt that the match was on her racquet. Could she keep it up? Muguruza faced two break points in the start of the third set, but did well to get through with the hold, before breaking in the following game. The 2015 Wimbledon finalist looked frustrated on court. She did not seem to adapt well to being on the defensive time after time, and was even more frustrated when she let a second break go in the third set–this time when serving for the match.
Kulichkova threw in a few sloppy unforced errors from the baseline and payed the price as Muguruza survived what was a psychologically challenging match-up, but an important one at that.
Now Muguruza has that match under her belt it should be an intriguing watch seeing how far she goes this week. Her game theoretically looks good on grass, but Muguruza will have to find a way to regularly win these sort of matches, where she is not always in control of her destiny and she is not feeling at her maximum. With that being said, this win over Kulichkova is massive because of that very reason. Twelve months ago this is a match that Muguruza would have lost, so the signs are pointing in the direction of a serious mental improvement from the young Spaniard.
