It’s always painful having to twiddle my thumbs during my lunch hour whilst a great tennis match is going on.  That was the case today when Daria Gavrilova and Ana Ivanovic played each other first up on Pietrangeli today.  Tennis twitter at least cushioned the blow and made me feel like I was watching it too! Gavrilova beat Ivanovic, 5-7 7-6(2) 7-6(7) in a runaway mine train of a match that lasted three hours and 4 minutes.  It was Gavrilova’s second marathon match in as many days, having beaten Belinda Bencic on Tuesday in a similar scoreline, 6-7(2) 7-5 6-2 and a similar time too, just four minutes shy of the three hour mark.

I’ve just finished watching the third set… it was great entertainment although I feel like I missed out on not watching first couple of hours so the drama didn’t seem quite as intense as it probably was.  A few thoughts… Gavrilova’s a fierce competitor and she’s going to be great for the WTA tour.  This was a pretty concerning performance from Ivanovic as she had a real case of the serving yips.  Her ball toss has always been shaky, but it hasn’t directly affected her matches in previous years.  In this match, particularly towards the end, she had to catch so many balls.  Ivanovic failed to serve out the match at *5-4 in the decider and then faced triple match point down 5-6 *0-40.  All of a sudden, Ivanovic, with her back to the wall, found some great serves to get out of a huge hole.

Unfortunately that hole opened up again in the third set tiebreak as she faced another trio of match points.  Once again, Ivanovic saved some of her best tennis for these moments.  It was a miracle Ivanovic didn’t double fault on match point as she was forced into a second serve on three occasions in the tiebreak.  Ivanovic saved seven match points in total but Gavrilova wouldn’t go away and sealed the win off two tame forehand errors into the net from the Serb.

Gavrilova progresses to a third round meeting in Rome with Timea Bacsinszky, who won her 23rd WTA main draw match of 2015.  On Tuesday as she backed up her first round win over Karolina Pliskova with another straight sets victory, this time against Sabine Lisicki, 6-4 6-3.  Lisicki was up a break in the first set but Bacsinszky played some smart tennis to come back.  She mixed up her game, never playing the same ball, and chased everything down eventually forcing Lisicki into the error.  And unfortunately, there were plenty from the German player.  Lisicki won two games at the end but she left herself too much to do as Bacsinszky won reasonably comfortably.

This will be a first career meeting between Gavrilova and Bacsinszky.  Gavrilova is bound to be tired although her performance against Ivanovic demonstrated that she can fight through that.  I think the more pressing issue is that Bacsinszky has become an extremely solid player and although she hasn’t quite found her feet on clay yet this year, I think the Swiss player will come through this match in straight sets.

Prediction: Bacsinszky d. Gavrilova in 2 sets (1 tight, 1 easy)

Photo in this post by Jimmie48 Tennis Photography