The Arthur Ashe Stadium will be packed with a sold out crowd on Saturday afternoon for the ladies final but the fans in attendance won’t be watching Serena Williams like many thought they would be when they bought tickets.
Instead everyone inside the venue will be witnessing the first ever all-Italian Grand Slam final as Roberta Vinci takes on her compatriot Flavia Pennetta for the last major of the year.
Vinci produced the performance of her life in the semi-final against Serena. She came from a set and a break down and from a break down in the final set to deliver some stunning tennis and arguably the biggest shock in Grand Slam history if not the history of the sport.
Vinci wasn’t alone with the lifetime performances on Friday though. Flavia Pennetta extended her love affair with New York by beating the Romanian number two seed Simona Halep in a surprisingly one sided last four clash to set up this intriguing final.
Nerves will be a big thing in this final I suspect. Neither have played a singles final of this magnitude before so it is only natural for there to be a few nerves around.
For me the big issue going into this final and perhaps what will settle it is who drops down to normality the quickest and gets into their stride first. I say that because both had the biggest win of their life on Friday so there will be a huge adrenalin rush and emotional high to overcome.
It isn’t easy to predict that sort of thing but for me I think Pennetta will be back down to earth the quickest. The reason I say that is I think when she turned up to New York she will have fancied her chances of a strong run and she would have expected to beat Halep.
There’s no way in the world Vinci will have expected to have any chance against Serena and the Italian even admitted as much in her post match interview. Beating Serena is a much bigger thing than beating anyone else on the planet and that high coupled with all the media attention she’ll have had in the aftermath given that she ended Serena’s calendar slam hopes will have been quite tiring I would imagine.
Pennetta leads the head to head between the two although they’ve only played once since 2010. She leads 5-4 in past meetings and won that match in 2013 which was in the quarter finals here.
Pennetta has won four of the last six they’ve played and all four of her wins have come in straight sets. Only two of those eight sets have been closer than 6-2 so Pennetta seems to have a significant edge on her rival.
From a neutral point of view I hope this isn’t the case as I’d like to see a really competitive final but I can’t help but think that Vinci’s final came against Serena. She won her Grand Slam by winning that match and of the two I expect her to struggle more emotionally here. With that in mind and the fact she seems to dominate the sets she wins against Vinci, Pennetta can cover a 3.5 game start.
Back F.Pennetta (-3.5 games) to beat R.Vinci for a 4/10 stake at 1.80 with Bet365
