Silly question, but a player can reach the quarter-finals of a $1.2 million tournament without hitting a single ball. I checked, and actually nobody finds that odd.
First, she’s the No. 4 seed, so she skipped the first round, that’s the rule. Then her second-round opponent, Czech player Barbora Krejcikova, withdrew. Result: two rounds, zero points played, and there she is in the quarters. I’m told it’s the rulebook, fine, but what does that mean?
Silly question, but where does the match she never played go? It doesn’t show up anywhere, not in the rankings, not in the tournament archives. I checked, and actually nobody can tell me what replaces a point that was never struck.
In the quarters, she faces Maja Chwalinska, the No. 5 seed, who beat Oleksandra Oliynykova 6-0, 6-1, a real match, that one. Their only previous meeting ended 6-4, 6-0 for the Pole at Roland Garros this year. If Mertens wins this quarter, she’ll have put her first points on the board.
Then there’s the matter of the title to defend. She won it last year, so naturally every point matters to her. But this week she still hasn’t played a thing, even though she could have joined the Yellow Aces for the Billie Jean King Cup Finals instead. She chose Singapore, to defend her points. Someone once told me to head to the clubhouse bar, so off I went looking for a bar. She’s already in the quarters.
Meanwhile, Sofia Costoulas, ranked 152nd, played her first main-draw match at a WTA 500. Three sets, 2 hours 50 minutes, lost 5-7, 7-6, 6-2 to Tatiana Prozorova. Two Belgians at the same tournament, two different realities: one sweats for almost three hours and heads home, the other is in the quarters without breaking a sweat. In football, they’d call that a goal without touching the ball. Here, they call it the rules.
Anyway, I still have a lot to learn.
It’s true, we checked: 7sur7.
