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Top seed Ashleigh Barty has capped off a strong first week at Wimbledon 2021 with a 6-3, 7-5 win over Katerina Siniakova in the third round. She will be hoping to advance to her first quarterfinal at the grasscourt Major on Monday, when she takes on fellow Roland Garros champion Barbora Krejcikova in the fourth round.
The match on Saturday had several hard-fought games, but Barty came out unscathed from most of them. Siniakova's late surge in the second set made things tight, but Barty did just enough to halt the Czech's comeback.
On that note, here is a look at the three most important takeaways from the third-round encounter:
#1 Ashleigh Barty's serve comes to the rescue once again
One of the keys to Ashleigh Barty's rise up the rankings has been her dependable kick serve, which she employs at will to control matches.
Barty's serve has been on point all week, and she's thundered down 26 aces en route to the fourth round. In her match against Siniakova, the Aussie racked up eight aces without conceding a single double fault.
Barty successfully attempted the serve-and-volley tactic on numerous occasions, giving the Czech little breathing room in the match. And when Siniakova was two points away from taking the second set to a tiebreaker, the top seed pulled out a bunch of powerful down-the-T serves to finish the job.
#2 Ashleigh Barty's net approaches nullified Katerina Siniakova's attack
Ashleigh Barty approached the net multiple times against Katerina Siniakova, to earn some quick points. Meanwhile the Czech, despite being a doubles specialist, made a few uncharacteristic volley errors, and often found it difficult to anticipate her opponent's next move.
Barty won 72% of her net points, in contrast to Siniakova's 65%. The latter even fluffed an easy overhead on break point during the second game of the match, thus handing Barty the early initiative.
#3 Katerina Siniakova's comeback was too little, too late
While the first set was fairly straight-forward, the second set went down to the wire as Katerina Siniakova rose to the occasion.
The Czech, relying solely on her flat groundstrokes in the early going, leaked 11 unforced errors in the first set. But she used a lot more variety in the second to stage a furious comeback.
After going 0-3 down, Siniakova broke Barty's serve twice to eventually level the set at 5 games all. Siniakova used the forehand slice more liberally as the set wore on, disrupting Barty's rhythm at will.
But Siniakova's rearguard action came too late in the day, and Barty's own variety proved too much to handle for the Czech when she served in the 11th game of the second set. She did put up a fine display on Wimbledon's Centre Court, but it was Barty who managed to hold firm and advance to the fourth round.
