Elisabetta Cocciaretto’s journey on the grass in Birmingham ends in the semi-final. The blue tennis player gives up with a double 6-2 to the Kazakh Yulia Putintseva, number 41 in the world rankings, which thus reaches the first final of the season, awaiting the winner between Alja Tomljanovic and Anastasia Potapova in the last act.
The start of the match already doesn’t seem to promise very well: Elisabetta’s first round of service is very laborious and she has to give in to her advantages. Not even the Kazakh seems to be registered and there is an immediate counter-break, but Elisabetta is constantly in trouble: if she saves herself in the fourth game, in the sixth and eighth she has to give up again, not taking advantage of the chances to close, and in just over 40 minutes the Italian is down.
And things don’t change in the second half: the Italian often has to resort to the second and it doesn’t even make a difference with the first. In just over twenty minutes he found himself 5-0 down, losing serve twice and not capitalizing on the two immediate counter-break chances in the third game, which he then paid and left the serve scoreless..
A reaction of pride arrives, taking the first game of the set and canceling three match points on the Kazakh’s serve and even breaking her serve, but it’s not a turning point in the match: on the contrary, Putintseva solves everything without problems and closes the score once again on the Italian’s serve.
Who paid a lot today with the shot at the start of the game: ten break points offered in eight service games, only in the 1-5 game of the second set were there no problems. Both 47% with the first serve (15/32) and 39% with the second serve (11/28) are too little.
