Sam Stosur has a lot to live up to. With her cool demeanor, aviator sunglasses and gunslinger arms, she looks impervious. But she isn’t. Li Na exposed Stosur’s weaknesses before self-destructing in a rather lax contest in the Rome semifinals.
When it began, the match was all Stosur’s. She projected steely determination and caught Li off-guard with some powerful serves. The Chinese player, who was broken in her first service game, looked puny and lightweight compared to Stosur’s commanding presence. When Stosur finished the sixth game with an ace to go up 4-2, the match felt entirely drama-free.
But Li dug in, found her footing and started to hit powerful, deep shots into the corners. She battled intelligently and eventually broke Stosur to even the score at 5-5. Li pulled ahead for the first time at 6-5 after a comfortable service game (and a loose one from Stosur); the Aussie held in turn, and the women were headed to a tiebreak.
The tiebreak was notable for how tentative Stosur was starting to look. Her shots had no depth, landing mid-court, and seemed to have less pace than Li’s. On the contrary, Li’s groundstrokes were like darts, sent with deadly accuracy to the back corners. Still, Stosur, who was the weaker returner of the two, came away with the first-set win. Li’s errors were the only way Stosur was winning points, but win them she did, squeaking out of the tiebreak, 8-6.
After that, Li deflated completely. The fight she had shown was gone, and Stosur cruised to a 5-0 lead. It was at this point when Li recovered some intensity and engaged in a few long rallies. But she still had her errors, on one of which, fittingly, Stosur won the match.
—Kristy Eldredge