Sloane Stephens and Venus Williams secure a comfortable lead for the United States over a Radwanska-less Polish team.
Neither team had their best team with them in Hawaii, but Poland was the team which was weakened much more noticeably, with neither Agnieszka nor Urszula Radwanska playing. USA didn’t have Serena Williams and Madison Keys with them, but with the depth of players they have, the U.S. team is more than decent with two Top 30 players (Venus and Sloane) playing their singles. The last tie of the day was started off by a match between the World No. 25 Sloane Stephens and the Poland’s team No. 1 Magda Linette, who never defeated a Top 30 player in her career. If you are a hardcore WTA fan, you could have seen these two play before. They met last year during Stephens’ title run in Washington, where she b
eat her 6-2 6-1. Stephens was the clear favorite coming into this match, and that made her nervous a little, but she shook it off the moment she got her first break in the third game. From then on we saw Stephens just roll through points, however it must be said that Linette did a good job in putting balls back, it’s just that Sloane has the power and has the ability to hit through players like Linette. After a difficult game at 3-1, Sloane just kept on going with her game and in the end she took the set 6-2. In the second set, Stephens started to lose her patience in points, she would try to go for a big shot from a non ideal position and started losing simple points. Suddenly, she was 0-3 down, with Linette making only one winner. As I was watching the match, I was unsure of Sloane’s fitness, because she was moving a lot less, not making those little steps you need to position yourself well. Linette just kept doing her thing, putting the balls back, making her opponent move which in the second set was starting the prove to be a successful tactic. Sloane dropped her serve after making several unforced errors and was down 0-4. At this point both players knew what they had to do; Linette had to just keep playing back and Sloane had to go her winners sooner than she normally would. Linette was obviously starting to get nervous a little and wasn’t able to get to 5-0 and got broken, giving Stephens a chance to get back in the second set. Linette was starting to miss on shots that were going in earlier in the set which put pressure on herself. With Sloane holding twice and then breaking Linette’s serve, we were at 4-4 and the lead Linette had was erased. Crowd was really driving Sloane and you could feel the home crowd advantage for the USA. Stephens played really well in the key game at 4-4 on Linette’s serve, playing some great rallies ended with amazing winners. In the end Stephens managed to serve out pretty easily and get the first point against Poland in straight sets.
Sloane Stephens (USA) – Magda Linette (POL) 6-2 6-4
The second match saw Venus Williams play a Fed Cup debutant, Paula Kania. Venus was leading the H2H 1-0, having
their only meeting at Stanford in 2014. Venus came out with a heavily strapped left thigh and didn’t start strong, got broken, but she immediately broke back. Kania was playing better than usual and kept level with Venus who is looking to get her first win in 2016, and struggled a bit with the toss and the serve in general. The only thing worse was her usual weakness, movement. The set went on, and with Venus not playing well on serve and returning greatly, only 3 games were won by the serving player in the first set, so instead of holding serve, most of the time players were holding the return. Venus took the set 7-5 and started strong in the second set, winning 6 straight points, so she was leading 1-0 and 30-0, but wasn’t able to break Kania. Venus had several chances early in the set to jump away from Kania, she was leading 3-1, 40-15 and wasn’t able to confirm the break on her serve. Venus finally confirmed the break at 4-2, thus putting Kania in the difficult position of serving to stay in the match, in which she did not succeed. Venus kept exploiting Kania’s weak second serve, stepping over a meter into the court on the return.
Venus Williams (USA) – Paula Kania (POL) 7-5 6-2
Tomorrow’s matches:
Venus Williams – Magda Linette
Sloane Stephens – Paula Kania
Mattek-Sands/Vandeweghe – Jans-Ignacik/Rosolska
