Iga Swiatek beats Liudmila Samsonova: World no.1's serve improvements under the radar?

well no rushing this time there's a net cord she puts her in control forehand volley could have been better though I don't think Sam son makes the pass missed the pass though wasn't the best could have close certainly wasn't the best volley certainly wasn't the best approach but she manages to get it done and in the end I mean we still kind of have to call it a relatively routine Victory could have been much more tricky though the first eight games really really good performance from samsonova but Shion just locked in from start to finish and uh things kind of unraveled after that one poor game that uh the Russian had at 4 five oh so that is 90 minutes for EA and she plays pugula just like she did in the 2022 US Open quarterfinal so and2 R quarterfinal so yeah she's she she would be responsible for three out of seven of Jesse's um grandon quarterfinal losses for the for the male Andre rublev if you may uh do we watch the minor Thompson the fourth set at least and then see what happens yeah but can we just do um just do a couple of minutes on oh of course we will of course we will yeah um yeah I mean it looks promising for her honestly I think she's going to have a very tough set of opponents from here Pula may be the best chance that we kind have very competitive high quality match I I expect the Pula match to be very competitive um yeah just the way that P has been playing the way she she kind of likes these conditions medium to fast and you know the way she uh can also hang with EA and break serve a lot and you know just the confidence that she has from having won all those matches I expect it to be a tight battle I like how Pula just kind of took herself from you know a mediocre season no expectations really going into the North American hardcord swing and suddenly she's in better form than she was last year when we were thinking like is she gonna win the US Open like is it is it actually possible and suddenly she's even better this year two metrics that samsonova won today uh one was that she won more points on second serve than eager uh and they did have relatively similar like 20 202 Serv for ego and 22 for Samson and the other one was distance covered which is not the not the metric you want to be winning pretty much you don't want to win that probably read fewer books today as well I don't know what read fewer books Yeah well yeah but then that's a that's the metric there for the eagle one I guess if you want to read yeah I guess I guess probably that would be you know Green um green number would be on the eag side yeah um but there's one thing I want to highlight which is 88% of points won on first serve from eager that may have been Samson of iring I don't know but it is something that's been sort of highlighted at various points this year that the eager serve was something that she adjusted over the the winter and people were very quick to jump on it in Australia going I wish she hadn't you know made these adjustments cuz it's not working in fact it's got worse well 88% uh of first serve points won is this an area of the game that EA has taken a step forward in 2024 either of you can answer that I think she's been serving like in terms of the the pace um she's serving maybe on average 5 to 10 miles per hour faster so she is like maybe hitting more effective body serves it is more kind of a the motion itself like at first when I saw it in Australia I was a little more critical of it but I think the play season it actually paid dividends like the match against saulena and Madrid and some big points she was getting free points on the first serve and some matches but also like the way that she's been it's also a stat that really shows like how well she backs it up I don't think it's the serve itself but also the plus one also the like you know the error she was getting from Sova in the Baseline Ries in the second set makes it maybe that one-sided but uh but yeah I think it's a very gradual change definitely like you know there's never been a moment where like you're oh yeah this is completely different now after about a month um so maybe it's not that noticeable generally but I do think she's serving better for sure the one against KOCO go right she was hitting like like her average for serf speed was pretty high in Rolling G I mean you know she can beat kov serving at 60% Pace but but generally like in Cincinnati it was helping her before the sub match right it's more of a question to me like what happens in a match where that's not doing as much damage where she's facing like a total like top tier opposition opponent because in Cincinnati she was also serving very well it was kind of the Saving Grace at first for her event then she kind of gets into the Rhythm but of course savena just well just destroys her on the day but yeah against Sams sonova probably not the most meaningful start though because Luda is just going to be trying to like you know hit massive returns anyway of whatever is coming at her so but of course it was so important today because yeah if if some Son of alls an early break in the first set maybe we got a completely different match no break points ultimately as competitive as those first eight games were and I think we did have a love 30 at one point I think it was the eager serve that got out of trouble um and yeah no big point so eager goes through shall we uh let's have a quick look at demon or Thompson because demon or is serving for the