Foot Fault!

Andrea Petkovic notched up the win of her career in Miami, outlasting the in-form top seed Caroline Wozniacki 7-5 3-6 6-3 to move into the quarters of a Premier+ for the first time in her career.

Before this match, I didn’t give Andrea Petkovic a chance in hell of defeating Caroline Wozniacki. After seeing so much of her off-court last month in Paris, I have come to like Petko in spite of that intolerable dance and the twitter craziness, however that doesn’t change the fact that she’s still a painfully one-dimensional run-of-the-mill power baseliner (bear with me, I’m not just trashing her for no reason – this is actually going somewhere) with no redeeming qualities against a wall like Wozniacki, right?

Wrong.

Instead, the German number one put on a tactical master class that her fellow players should watch again, again and again. There was none of the usual brand of tennis that some love to so affectionately call “brainless ballbashing”. Andrea said it herself in the post match interview;

“Most of the players think they can overpower Caroline, but it’s the wrong approach”

Damn right. Today she sat back, giving Wozniacki different heights, angles and shot patterns to deal with, effectively telling Wozniacki to come at her, with herself being aggressive only when the opportunity presented itself. Remember, the hot topic of the town has been Wozniacki’s newfound aggression recently, and thus she was initially happy to oblige. However, as Petkovic continued to vary her shots, Karolina’s poor technique was completely exploited as the errors flowed and flowed. She quickly attempted to reign her game in, but the result was the same, with Petkovic pouncing on the inevitable shanked short ball that came after their long exchanges. I also love that when Andrea attacked, she mostly attacked crosscourt in order to use the full angles of the court, creating openings for her to run forward and finish points off at the net with drive volleys. Needless to say, it worked.

Before I hype Petkovic to death, I should regress and highlight that with 52 errors from Karolina and 59 from Petkovic, it was an ugly match all-round as Wozniacki struggled to overcome her mental fatigue while nerves continually creeped into Petkovic’s game. But Petkovic’s plan wasn’t to play a faultless squeaky-clean match, rather it was to ironically bring Wozniacki’s level down, putting the ball into different areas of the court and forcing her into errors, and it worked, so ‘bravo’ to her.