Mid-way through the second set of her fourth-round match against Wang Qiang, Ashleigh Barty hit a decent serve out wide in the deuce court. Wang got to the ball in time, but mistimed her forehand return to send it well wide. It was a regular miss, but at that moment it seemed shocking and unbelievable; how could there possibly be an error from Wang’s side of the net?
And yet we shouldn’t have been feeling that way, because Wang wasn’t that accurate during the match. She played clean and compact, but she did make six unforced errors in the first set and eight in the second; those are good stats, but not unbelievable stats.
Off-colour Ashleigh Barty (left) missed forehands by miles and was visibly late on her backhands against Wang Qiang. AFP
It was what was happening at the other side of the net that was responsible for skewing our perception the wrong way. Barty was, much to the dismay of her legion of fans, a one-woman error army on the day.
The Australian overhit routine forehands. She was late on her down-the-line backhands, sending them into the tramlines. And worst of all, she couldn’t rely on her trusted slice, regularly conceding cheap points off it.
The first set got over in a blur, with Barty rushing hopelessly between points and swinging helplessly during them. The second set was more competitive, but the World No 2 always seemed a step slow and an idea behind. Even when she was in a position to get on level terms — she saved two match points at 3-5 and then had two break points at 4-5 — she never looked confident enough to mount a comeback.
How much of that had to do with Wang’s game? The Chinese is equipped with an uncomplicated playing style that is particularly difficult to handle if you’re having an off day. She is not a ferocious risk-taker like her countrywoman Li Na or a spin wizard like Hsieh Su-wei; instead, she has solid groundstrokes off both wings which she uses to stay in points long enough to elicit errors from her opponents.
Wang does have something that is unique among the top 20 though; her flat hitting from close to the baseline can make it tough for her opponents to put a lot of action on the ball. Barty never got enough height on her forehand to roll it safely into the corners, and she also had to undercut her slice harder than normal to keep it low. That explains, at least partly, why she had so much trouble keeping her shots in the court off either wing.
“I think I probably missed, on the slice in particular, half a dozen in a standard rally ball where they just float along, just clip the tape,” Barty said later. “There were times where I pressed, and I did miss by big margins. Q also forced me to do that with her depth, her control a lot of the time.”
The advantage of a solid, no-frills game like Wang’s is that it is less likely to come apart when put under pressure. In the second set there were numerous instances where her serve was under attack, but at almost every single one of them, she struck the ball with decent pace and depth — which proved enough to earn errors from Barty’s racquet.
Wang saved all the nine break points she faced in the match; now that is the unbelievable stat we have been looking for.
The Chinese has been hanging in and around the top 20 for a while now, having first got there in 2018. She won two titles last year — both in her home country — but her Slam results remained underwhelming, as she failed to get out of the third round at any Major.
But now Wang is a Slam quarter-finalist, and more importantly, is armed with the knowledge that she has beaten the second-best player in the world. The win over Barty will give her a lot of confidence, even if it may not necessarily translate to a deeper run here itself (she is likely to face Serena Williams next).
The 27-year-old is a bit of a late bloomer, but as we’ve seen countless times in the sport, that doesn’t matter much if the bloom is full. She also has the added motivation of doing her former coach Peter McNamara, who passed away in July, proud.
“He helped me a lot,” Wang said in her presser, when asked about McNamara. “Is really tough to me to hear he passed. I think he’s always been there with me, yes. He told me how to play the match. He took me to professional tennis. He always believed in me. He told me I can be the top player.”
Wang has the game for all surfaces and seasons; if she can stick to her guns with as much conviction as she did against Barty on Sunday, there’s no reason why she can’t turn into a ‘top player’.
As for Barty, this is the second consecutive Major where her game has gone off the rails without warning. One moment Barty looks like an artist who can do no wrong, the very next she struggles to find the broad side of a barn with her shots. Has that always been the case with her, or is the pressure of being the hunted rather than the hunter putting undue strain on the affable Aussie? At the risk of sounding too judgmental, one is tempted to go with the former.
Sunday's showing against Wang will go down as one of the all-time stinkers by a tournament favorite, and probably demand a bit of soul-searching in the coming off-season. But Barty still has a chance to end the year ranked World No 1, so there’s plenty more to gain from what has otherwise been an excellent year for her.
The Asian fall swing coming up will be a good opportunity for Barty to hit the reset button and make a charge for that year-end crown. But she will probably be hoping she doesn’t run into Wang in her own backyard; that uncomplicated game, as she discovered, can sometimes be too complicated to deal with.
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