2025 Wimbledon - Day 9 Men's and Women's Singles

WOMEN’S SINGLES

Aryna Sabalenka vs. Laura Siegemund

Elise Mertens served well, took the ball on the rise well, and fought hard, but there’s only so much you can do in a matchup where you’re severely overmatched in raw power. Aryna Sabalenka is through to the Wimbledon quarters without having dropped a set in 4 matches, and it’s really Slam or bust now - and I mean the Career Grand Slam, because IMO she’s shown by now that she’s more than capable of picking up the RG and Wimbledon titles to complete her trophy cabinet. The interesting thing here, honestly, is that none of her matches have been particularly easy. She’s had a 7-5 or 7-6 set in every match she’s played so far, and not because she’s struggled to find her range in the early goings or switched off at some point. All 4 of her opponents have genuinely played very well, and if there were any early-round jitters Sabalenka may have played her way into form.

Laura Siegemund has proven me wrong 3 times running now, with her latest win over Solana Sierra propelling her to a career-first Wimbledon QF at the age of 37. I am half-expecting her to just win the whole tournament at this point, but I also can’t ignore her opponent. My reflexive take is for Siegemund to get blown off the court 1 and 2, but this also has the potential to be Sabalenka’s most difficult match. There is a 0% chance her team was expecting her to play Laura Siegemund in the quarters of Wimbledon, so they’re going to be scrambling to do some scouting on her game here. When they finish digging up video footage from sabinelisickifansss or wherever, they’re going to see a much different player than anyone Saba has had to face thus far. Against Sierra, Siegemund basically won by never letting any normal baseline exchanges develop. There would be 2-3 groundstrokes, then she immediately would revert to a chip, a dropshot, a moonball, what have you. It was actually kinda reminiscent of Vondrousova, the last player to beat Sabalenka, but before anyone runs and bets the farm on Siegemund there are a couple key differences. Vondrousova is a lefty and her serve is way better than Siegemund’s; these are really important details because every free point is a crucial one against Sabalenka. At 37 years old Siegemund’s fitness will also be a concern, and while it looks like she works insanely hard in the gym her pulling out of the doubles at this stage is also a little concerning. Is she conserving her energy for the biggest match of her life, or is she trying not to worsen an injury that popped up against Sierra? At the very least this match should give us a bunch of entertaining rallies, but I think the clock may have finally struck midnight for Laura. Sabalenka in 2.

Amanda Anisimova vs. Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova

I caught the third set of Anisimova-Noskova, and it was absolutely thrilling. The momentum swung back and forth several times, and Anisimova had to fight back from a break down in the third set to win. Both players flip-flopped between stunning runs of form and shocking misses, with Anisimova visibly fighting some demons in particular; at 4-4, she netted a pretty easy backhand that would have given her an opening, and as she turned back to the baseline she was visibly starting to tear up. Amanda’s only 23, but she’s had some pretty devastating losses in her relatively short career, and I bet she was getting flashbacks to any number of them during that 4-4 game. Hopefully she’ll be able to breathe a little easier knowing that her top 10 debut has been confirmed after today’s results, but I don’t think the nerves are really going to go away this deep in a Major.

Earlier on Sunday, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova booked her ticket to the quarters with a straight-sets win over Sonay Kartal. The main story, however, was Hawkeye Live being inadvertently shut off and missing a crucial out call at 4-4. The ball was clearly long, but the umpire elected to replay the point rather than give it to Pavlyuchenkova, and Kartal eventually broke to serve for the first set (though in a twist of good karma, Pavlyuchenkova broke back and eventually won the set in a tiebreak). The official ruling was that since Hawkeye Live was down for the entirety of the point, there was no way of knowing if any of the previous shots in the rally were actually out (they weren’t), and therefore the point needed to be replayed. As you can imagine, this explanation went over pretty well with Twitter, YouTube and r/tennis, and they were able to discuss the nuances of the issue calmly and with rational- yeah no everyone started freaking out.

This was an unfortunate situation, and Pavlyuchenkova made a pretty pointed jab about the umpire deferring to the let call to avoid ruffling the partisan crowd’s feathers, but I can see the logic behind the umpire’s decision. Tennis is kind of like court (heh) in that snap judgements are often used as precedent in future matches, and I’m sure the umpire had that in the back of his mind when making his call. When chair umpires started reluctantly letting Tsitsipas sneak off to the bathroom for thinly veiled coaching breaks a few years ago, the floodgates opened for everyone else to do the same thing until some hastily-published guidelines came out. Some people will say that the real tragedy is not having VAR available for the umpire to use in this situation, but what would happen if the out call was a lot closer than the shot Kartal hit? What if there was a shot earlier in the rally that was too close to conclusively call using the available footage? Contrary to what most people are saying, I think this was a difficult edge case to handle, and I believe the ump’s decision was based on trying to avoid even more difficult, more controversial edge cases in the future. Clearly it wasn’t the most popular decision with the fans, and on the surface it does seem silly, but I see the logic.

I also saw quite a few people who said they felt Kartal should have conceded the point, were disappointed in her, etc., but that doesn’t sit right with me either. After a year+ of Hawkeye Live being the norm, these players are probably conditioned to not think so much about in/out during matches and just play until they hear the bell (think about how many times a player has been surprised by Hawkeye non-calls on shots they thought were clearly out). I read that Kartal also stated she couldn’t see the ball clearly, and maybe it was a cop-out but I do think it was a pretty fair statement. The ball looked a mile long on VAR because the camera was oriented perpendicularly to the court, but anyone who’s played tennis knows that it’s a lot more difficult to judge that when you’re facing the ball head-on, especially from the other side of the net (and yes, the net can interfere with your ability to see exactly where the ball lands). Ultimately, it shouldn’t be Kartal’s responsibility to concede the point at such a crucial juncture, so I don’t fault her for it.

Anyway, 700 words of exposition later, let’s discuss this matchup. The biggest weapon on the court will be Anisimova’s backhand; it’s the best on tour IMO, and she is capable of hitting it in any direction with blistering speed. Her forehand can be hit nearly as hard, but it’s far less stable, and Pavlyuchenkova is going to want to direct as much traffic as she can to that wing. Pavs is a typical power hitter with some more old-school (is it accurate to say that yet??) groundstroke mechanics, and while she doesn’t have the raw power of Anisimova she is more consistent and a little craftier. She played some excellent cat-and-mouse points to break down the defensively-minded Kartal in the fourth round, and she would do well to bring the same to the Anisimova match as Amanda isn’t as fast as Sonay.

This one is gonna be really close, despite a 3-0 H2H for Anisimova that she contributed to as recently as last summer. One X factor in this match will be the fitness. Pavs is playing well, but all of her matches have been really grueling and I wonder if she’s going to slow down here. Obviously Amanda won’t be looking to extend rallies per se, but having to chase down the ball for 2+ hours might take the legs out from beneath Anastasia. Anisimova in 3.

MEN’S SINGLES

Taylor Fritz vs. Karen Khachanov

Jordan Thompson’s body finally gave out on him, and Taylor Fritz effectively got a walkover into the quarterfinals. Karen Khachanov will be similarly well-rested, taking well under two hours to finish off Kamil Majchrzak, so it sets up a high-quality clash here. These two have played twice before, with Khachanov winning both meetings, but they were in 2020 and 2019 so there isn’t really a whole lot to go off of there. Taylor Fritz has made improvements to virtually every facet of his game since then: his backhand is miles better, his serve/forehand combo is that much more lethal, and the hours he’s put in the gym with Michael Russell are paying dividends in events like these where he has to play two 5-setters early on. That makes this a very difficult puzzle for Khachanov to solve, because how is he supposed to score? Going backhand cross is the obvious try, but Fritz is a wall off that side now and has gotten a lot more comfortable with redirecting his backhand DTL - which would be right into Khachanov’s biggest weakness (his forehand can really break down when he’s put on the run). He can try to hit a bunch of short balls to take advantage of his movement, but Fritz has gotten better at counter-drops and honestly, Khachanov is a touch slower than Fritz. Both of these guys are giant humans in general, so they will make a lot of returns but might not necessarily do a lot with them; whoever wins is going to need to be intensely focused and execute on putaways for 3+ hours. In recent years these two have had similar results at Majors, but I would argue that Khachanov’s success has been more about capitalizing on good draws and beating who he’s supposed to beat rather than elevating his game to a new level on the biggest stages. The latter is what he’ll need to do to get past Fritz here, but I’m not sure he can. Fritz in 4.

Cameron Norrie vs. Carlos Alcaraz

Not since John Isner, The Man Who Killed the Advantage Set, stalked these hallowed grounds have I seen a player pile up over 100 winners and still lose the match, but that’s exactly what happened to Nicolas Jarry in a losing effort to Cameron Norrie on Sunday. Jarry took two tiebreaks in sets 3 and 4 to level the match (including a match point saved in the third), but Norrie finally found an opening on the Jarry serve at the start of the fifth and rode the momentum all the way to the win. At the handshake, Jarry and Norrie got into an extended discussion about what Jarry felt was gamesmanship on Norrie’s part. He reckoned that Cam was taking too long to serve the ball, effectively getting around a deserved time violation by milking the untimed interval between the first and second serves. At some point during the match he pleaded his case with Eva Asderaki-Moore, and she gave a wishy-washy answer but ultimately didn’t take any action against Norrie.

While I can understand Jarry’s frustration, there’s a couple things to consider here. The first is that the handshake is absolutely the wrong place to bring this up with the opponent. There’s no way for Jarry to protest in a way that doesn’t make him look like a massive sore loser, and to his credit he seemed to recognize this; as he was leaving the court, he walked by Norrie in his chair, reiterated that he thought he played well, and the pair shook hands for a second time.

The second is whether Norrie’s “gamesmanship”, if you can call it that, was particularly effective. I don’t have the stats for % of 2nd serve points won when bouncing the ball >20 times, but multiple commenters pointed out that he often lost the point after doing the extended ball bouncing, and even threw in a couple double faults as well. Jarry commented that he explicitly did not think it was a nervous tic, but after rereading some descriptions of the ball-bouncing from friendly Redditors (extensive research failed to yield any direct video footage) that’s kind of exactly what it sounded like. People were saying he was kind of balking, as if he was about to start his service motion but then went back to bouncing the ball, and that immediately reminded me of Jimmy Connors’ autobiographical description of his OCD not allowing him to put a can of Coke down beside his chair until it felt exactly right (to be clear, not speculating at all about Norrie’s mental health). Everyone is wired differently, but unless you are completely gassed I also can’t think of many situations where it would help you to extend the time between first and second serves, and most of what Jarry was complaining about happened in the second set.

Of course, Norrie not really benefiting from bouncing the ball 30 times before a second serve doesn’t mean that another player might discover that he does in fact benefit from it and take up the same strategy. With all of the recent hubbub about the serve clock and other attempts to speed up the game, it will be interesting to see if the ATP/WTA/ITF make a ruling against players trying to draw out the time between serves as a stall tactic. The current rule is that after a missed first serve, the second serve must be struck “without delay”, but there’s no quantitative definition for this. Will a second serve clock be instituted between first and second serves, to be stopped when a player tosses the ball? Would it be better for such a clock to end when the player actually strikes the ball so that they can’t abuse multiple serve tosses? What about in windy or sunny situations where there legitimately may be the need to do a couple tosses before being able to hit the serve? These are extremely minor issues in the grand scheme of the sport, but the little things can add up, and clearly it made a difference to Nicolas Jarry on Sunday.

While this was going on, Carlos Alcaraz faced stiffer opposition from Andrey Rublev than he might have been expecting. Rublev took the first set in an impeccable tiebreak and, honestly, had Alcaraz on the ropes more than a few times in the subsequent 3 sets, but I lost count of how many times he let Carlos back into the point by not hitting the ball into the open court. I’m not sure whether it’s a confidence thing or a technique thing that sometimes prevents Rublev from pulling it at a wider angle cross-court, but it was really noticeable in this match, and may have prevented the contest from being even closer than it already was.

Norrie has beaten Alcaraz twice before: once in Cincinnati in 2022 and once in Rio in 2023. Alcaraz was literally playing on one leg in 2023 (and still almost won) so there’s not a lot to learn there, and in Cincy Norrie basically won off his defense. I was watching that match on TV and distinctly remember him frustrating Alcaraz to the point of him slamming a ball out of the stadium in the final game, which was a shock to me at the time. Norrie’s defense this tournament is suddenly a lot closer to where it was when he was a top 10 player, but Alcaraz’s offense has elevated over the years from a great level to an all-time-great level. He was already able to navigate some very tricky opponents in Fognini and Struff earlier in the tournament, and while Norrie is a lot stingier than either of those two it doesn’t seem possible to weird Carlos out of his rhythm right now. His attacks are just too automatic right now, and what’s more, he seems to be having a lot of fun making his opponents sprint around the court. Alcaraz in 3-4.