Heather Watson’s despondency management skills are impressive but even she strained to camouflage her 7-6 (7-3), 7-6 (7-0) defeat by the American Lauren Davis on day one of the US Open with anything but a familiar refrain of regret.
The British No1 is out of the tournament at the earliest possible moment, finding Davis too solid in the tie-breaks of their first-up contest on Court 17 and wasting five of nine break opportunities, while her opponent took four from five.
“I found it quite hot today,” she said. “I felt fine before the match. I was hydrated. I had been drinking a lot the days before and eating the right things and got an early night and I slept fine. But maybe it was just a mix of tension and some long rallies.”
And there were plenty of those, some of them brilliant, although neither player could find a convincing run of consistency.
As Watson said, “When it came down to it in the tie-break, she played a lot better than I did. She made her first serves and I didn’t; went for it and hit some lines and I didn’t. That’s what it came down to.”
Watson played a lot of good shots but 34 unforced errors and two double faults in a match that lasted two hours and 10 minutes. It was such a long way from the level she hit on her finest day, coming within a couple of shots of beating Serena Williams at Wimbledon two months ago.
She tried hard under questioning beforehand to ignore that match, arguing with some justification it was not productive to dwell on a defeat.
However, she also has to wrestle with the fact that since then she has come nowhere near to reproducing tennis like that again and has tumbled to 61 in the world rankings.
Davis, out at 84 on the rankings list, nevertheless brought her best game. She arrived in New York after losing to Victoria Azarenka in the third round in Cincinnati but also holds a victory over the former world No1 and two-time Australian Open champion in Indian Wells last year.
A compact, muscular baseliner with a decent serve, a good backhand and a lot of speed around the court, she is the sort of player who makes opponents go to their limit when she is near her best.
Watson got two break points in the sixth game of the first set and couldn’t quite close it out against a tigerish opponent. Davis broke in the ninth game, forcing Watson to strike her forehand too heavily long, but she dropped serve and they went to the tie-break, with the American getting the breaks and the first set.
Watson had been curiously reluctant to come to the net until then but, through a renewed sense of urgency or desperation, abandoned her back-court strategy in the second. But she never looked entirely comfortable.
Asked if her apparent discomfort with her right wrist in that frame was a factor, she said, “I think that I was cramping a little bit in my hand, and then, when I moved to the other side of the court, I started cramping in my legs.
“But I’m fit coming into the tournament. It’s not that I’m not fit. I think it was a bit of ... the stress and everything else – and the heat, just all together. I was thinking a lot about this match, thinking that it was a big opportunity and thinking about the previous years and my results here.”
The mental demons belonged solely to Watson but the conditions were shared. It was hot and humid for both players. Davis did not appear to be physically inconvenienced and now advances refreshed and confident after an encouraging performance, although her serving was all over the place in the second set, three of her six double faults coming in one game.
For Watson there is doubles still to contest here and then it is back into the late-season grind, away from the glare that she sometimes finds uncomfortable.
“I am headed back to London for a bit, then I’m going to do four weeks in Asia. I’ll just keep fit and healthy and try and make the most of this Asia trip. I feel like I’ve got a lot to gain there. I didn’t do so well last year, so I’m pretty much not defending anything at all. I want to keep my ranking up, thinking ahead to the Olympics.”
Her game has dipped but her shiny disposition is still in place.
