NEW YORK—Shortly after the men’s Wimbledon runner-up went down on Day 3 at the U.S. Open, the women’s French Open champion made her own early exit. But Garbine Muguruza’s desultory performance against Anastasija Sevastova wasn’t a result of cramps, the affliction that contributed to fifth-seeded Milos Raonic’s second-round defeat. The third-seeded Spaniard could only wish the explanation for it was that easy.
Muguruza racked up errors on this evening—38 in all, each seemingly worse than the last. They had little rhyme or reason for their occurrences, and it wasn’t as if Sevastova, the 48th-ranked Latvian who actually retired from the game three years ago, was hitting the cover off the ball, or forcing Muguruza well outside of her baseline comfort zone. In fact, both women struck 22 more unforced errors than winners in this break-filled content. (There were 12 in all.)
But Muguruza failed to sufficiently generate her own pace and looked lost among the thousands of fans seated around her inside Arthur Ashe Stadium. She took an early break-of-serve lead, was broken and failed to recover in time to take the first set—and then completely capitulated in the second. In one stretch, Muguruza dropped 15 of 20 points en route to a 4-0 deficit. When the two exchanged breaks and Sevastova served at 5-1, it seemed that only nerves could do her in. They very nearly did.