Youthful persistence lost out to age and experience in Stuttgart on April 26, when 15-year-old Ukrainian star Marta Kostyuk lost in the second round of the Porsche Grand Prix to Frenchwoman and sixth seed Carolyn Garcia.
The match score was 6-1, 3-6, 7-5. Play lasted an hour and 41 minutes.
Kostyuk, the sixth-ranked Ukrainian women’s singles tennis player, was the youngest competitor since Martina Hingis in 1994 to make it to the second round of the Stuttgart tournament. Garcia, at 24, is nine years her senior.
Garcia started the first set aggressively, forcing an early break of Kostyuk’s serve. The Frenchwoman then took firm control of the set, which ended 6-1 to Garcia after only 18 minutes.
But it wasn’t match over for Kostyuk yet: the young Ukrainian’s service settled down, and she began to make Garcia work with some active tennis. Kostyuk forced a series errors from Garcia, and broke her serve with some good attacking moves and backhand shots, to win the second set 3-6.
That made for a dramatic third set, with both players holding their serves for eleven consecutive games. But with the score at 6-5 to Garcia, the young Ukrainian began to make errors on her serve, at one point dropping to 0-30 during what was to be the last game.
She fought back to 30-40, but Garcia returned Kostyuk’s final serve of the match well. Kostyuk’s backhand finally failed her, and she sent her return shot into the net for Garcia to take the third set 7-5 and win the match by 2 sets to one.
On the upside, Kostyuk’s strong second-set performance against the sixth seed was impressive, and at her post-match press conference Garcia admitted the third set could easily have gone either way. In the end the young Ukrainian was let down by her serve – although her percentage of first-serve winners was higher, at 72 percent to 68 percent, and she hit seven aces, Kostyuk made five double faults.
But Ukrainian interest at the Porsche Grand Prix is not over yet, as Garcia now goes on to meet the world No.3, Ukrainian Elina Svitolina, in the quarterfinals.
