Lesl
ey Kerkhove(NED) Junior Ranking High of No. 12.WTA Ranking High of No. 1025
I watched just one match of hers, which was against Laura Robson in the third round. First thing to notice about Kerkhove is her build. Looks like a slightly bigger version of Tamira Paszek i.e, not very suited to tennis.
She's a clean ball striker. The forehand is her main weapon. Can hit some pretty flashy winners off that side, and can change the direction of the ball pretty smoothly and effectively despite some notable shortcomings. Her timing on it is excellent and can keep it decent depth with it, making up for her extremely laboured footwork. She hits a delicious running forehand down-the-line. Any time she got a short ball on the forehand she was quick to dictate play and go for the space. The fact that Robson for the most part, didn't realise that Kerkhove's forehand was a hell of a lot better than her backhand, made her look alot more dangerous than she probably is. Her lackadaisical footwork however, means she makes way more unforced errors on the forehand side than she really should. Several times she got caught completely flat footed on the baseline, and slapped a forehand wide into the trams or into the middle of the net. Little steps are something of a foreign concept to her.
Her backhand is mediocre at best. It's a relatively clean hit when she's in position to hit it (which isin't alot of the time, considering her pedestrian footwork.), but it rarely clears the service line. She managed to hit a couple of decent cross-court short angled winners off it when she pushed her body weight into the shot, but overall, her weaker side. The technique on it was a little suspect.
Her return-of -serve, like many other young guns, is poor. Reactions off it are about as good as Michaela Krajicek (i.e slow as a snail). The backhand return-of-serve is dreadful. Didn't read Robsons serve well at all, although Robson does have an excellent and tricky lefty serve. Most return-of-serves which she got on her racquet were either shanked/hacked back into court/dumped into the net, or when she actually connected with one, it was always extremely conservatively placed, up the middle of court and rarely past the T, already putting her in a bad position in the rally, and her defensive skills are nowhere near good enough to get away with it.
Movement, as you would expect for someone of her size, is dire. To her credit, she actually read Robson's ground-stroke plays pretty well, and as already mentioned some of her running forehand down-the lines were magnificent. Movement to her backhand is again, dire. Can't deal with deep balls to her feet, because of the lack of footwork.
Her serve isin't a bomb, but it's flat, consistent, well-placed and not very predictable. 2nd serve is deep, and doesn't sit up, yet appears to be pretty safe. Action is no-frills, yet isin't readable. Only service/tactical game plan I noticed from her was, acute slider out-wide on the deuce court to Robson's backhand, which always came back to the middle of the court or cross-court to her forehand, which she would duly slot away for a winner either down-the-line or inside out. Hard to tell how good her serve really was though, considering how badly Robson was returning it. In her 1st five service games, she was dropping about one or two points a game, due to wild return-of-serve errors.
Mid-court game is non-existent. Came to the net once of her own accord, resulting in a diabolical smash.
Bottom-line on Kerkhove;
Her terrible footwork prevents her from effectively being a consistent 1-2 strike player. She can't look for a forehand nearly as much as she would like, with such laziness at the baseline. Isin't a big enough hitter to cover up these gaping holes in her game, and her movement adds another problem to the equation. Has a pretty steady and solid mentality, but would be surprised if she ever made the top 100, to be frank. I havn't heard anything about her outside this match since.
No comments:
Post a Comment