Reading serves as clearly as the sponsor sign on the back wall, Francesca Schiavone was outside the doubles alley when she launched herself into a forehand return that dipped diagonally inside the sideline before Samantha Stosur could take a step toward the ball.
Cracking returns on the rise, Schiavone made the ball dance and Stosur squirm in a 6-2, 6-4 sweep of the U.S. Open champion in the opening round of Sydney. That the sixth-ranked Stosur was facing the world No. 11 in a rematch of the 2010 French Open final is a testament to a loaded field, featuring 10 of the world’s Top 11, with the Sam and Fran show serving as the day's marquee match.
In the opening points, Stosur used her vicious kick serve to set up successive inside-out forehands winners—playing exactly the pattern she sought to impose. Schiavone responded by stepping inside the baseline and smacking a pair of return winners that seem to rattle the fifth-seeded Aussie. The sculpted Stosur tried to handcuff her 5’5 ½” opponent with the shoulder-high bounce of the kick serve to her one-handed backhand on the ad side. But Schiavone largely nullified that play by timing her returns brilliantly, forcing Stosur into scrambling replies hit off her back foot.
The theatrical Italian changed spins and speeds shrewdly in breaking serve three straight times to open up a 5-1 lead. Stosur began finding her range as she saved two set points to hold for 2-5, then fought off three more set points when Schiavone served for the set. On the sixth set point, Schiavone jammed Stosur with a slice serve, and after a shanked forehand return, 43-minute first set was over.
Closure was a reminder of how well Schiavone manages a match. Knowing that Stosur, who wields a full western grip on her forehand, faces a drastic grip change on the return, she tied her up with body blows. Schiavone can be maddening because she seldom feeds an opponent the ball in her strike zone, and she’s skilled at taking pace off. She shuffled funky slice backhands low to the Stosur forehand, forcing the harder hitter to generate her own pace
“I think I played really well,” Schiavone told Todd Woodbridge in her sing-song English. “I like the surface and when you play a lot the balls, they go big, which I like.”
A rhythm player whose confidence and ball-striking is sharpest when she's playing consistently, Stosur will enter next week's Australian Open with just three matches under her belt on the new season. She has yet to surpass the fourth round in nine appearances at her home major. Stosur has the weapons to play tennis on her terms, but lacked clarity on court today. She sprayed a forehand wide to drop serve and fall into a 3-4 second-set hole from which she never recovered.
The 31-year-old Schiavone, who competes with the gleeful passion of a ball kid invited to warm up a pro, meets Brisbane finalist Daniela Hantuchova for a spot in the quarterfinals. The Italian holds a 5-2 lifetime edge.
—Richard Pagliaro