Venus Williams won her 16th consecutive match in Dubai with an excellent performance to defeat Belinda Bencic, 6-1 6-2 in just 69 minutes. Venus played a pretty sensational first set and was hitting the ball as clean as i’ve seen anyone hit the ball this year. She hit 11 winners to just 2 unforced errors and didn’t drop a point on her first serve. Bencic actually played a reasonably good set, but was blown off the court.
Bencic showed some resistance at the start of the second set as she took advantage of a couple of rare errors off the racquet of Venus. She went up an early break, but was unable to consolidate it in a lengthy third game of the set. Belinda didn’t win another game as Venus won the last six games of the match. The courts suit her game to a tee and she is going to be very tough to stop this week in Dubai. Bencic went away at the end and lost her last two service games on double faults. To be honest, I don’t think many players would have given Venus a close match today.
At 17 years old, I can completely understand Bencic’s frustration and at times, brattiness on court. It shows she cares and also, that she believes she should be beating these players of Venus’s calibre. I’m sure that over time Bencic will become more emotionally stable on court. She has looked visibly upset in a number of her matches this year and I don’t think it’s helping her cause. I do understand though because I am 25 years old and when I play tennis, I still throw my racquet around like a petulant child when i’m losing (this happens a lot).
Venus will play Lucie Safarova or Casey Dellacqua in the third round. Lucie picked up her second WTA main draw of the win on Monday with a 6-1 6-4 victory over Monica Puig. I was following on live scores and it looked like a good win. Lucie got the break of serve in the second set and rode it home, serving out the match with no problems at all.
Moo's Tennis Blog 