Putintseva vs Tomljanovic: Birmingham Final Analysis (WTA 250)
Superb serving and 9 groundstroke winners from each wing propelled Yulia Putintseva to a 3rd career Tour title.
cover 📸 credit: LTA twitter
Yulia Putintseva (WTA #41) improved her head-to-head record against Ajla Tomljanovic (WTA #189) to 5-1 with a straight-sets win in the WTA 250 Birmingham final.
Victory brought Putintseva a third career WTA Tour title, first outside of clay. She was a champion in Nuremberg (2019) and Budapest (2021), and has featured in a total of 6 Tour finals.
Defeat for Tomljanovic means her search for a maiden Tour title will continue. Despite a 0-5 record in championship matches, after missing most of 2023 due to knee surgery and over 3 months this season to remove uterine fibroids, Tomljanovic will certainly take the positives from capturing her biggest career title last November (WTA 125 Florianopolis) and now reaching a first Tour final since 2019.
The Birmingham final was marked by Putintseva’s scorching start.
With 2 aces and 9 winners to 3 unforced errors, Putintseva took the opening set losing just 1 of 13 serve points, winning 16 of 27 return points and holding break points in all 4 Tomljanovic’s serve games.
Putintseva’s form continued in the early stages of set 2 as she won 8 of the first 10 points to grab a 2-0 lead.
Up until that moment, Putintseva had made great use of wide slice serves on the Deuce court, winning 8 of 9 points (including 6 on return errors by Tomljanovic).
From the third game, Tomljanovic began anticipating those sliders. On the first point, she hit a forehand return winner, and at 30/30 she fired a forcing return that set up her first break point chance of the match. It was converted when Putintseva overhit a forehand.
Tomljanovic steadily raised her level while Putintseva was now mixing winners with a few errors. And Putintseva’s go-to serve on the Deuce court was no longer providing free points.
Tomljanovic, after losing 8 of the first 9 games of the final, won 5 of 6 games en route to a 5-3 lead in the second set. Serving for the set at 5-4, she saved 2 break points before reaching a set point. That’s when disaster struck as the Australian hit 3 consecutive double faults to squander her set point and surrender her serve. Two easy holds followed, so the set would be decided in a tie-break.
Despite starting with a double fault, Putintseva’s serve became a major factor once again as she delivered 5 unreturned serves in the tie-break. These included 1 ace and, more significantly, a missed 2nd serve return by Tomljanovic when she was holding a set point at 5:6. That was Tomljanovic’s last lead. Putintseva finally closed the match on her 3rd championship point, benefitting from a “serve+1” forehand error.
Three key factors had a big influence in the Birmingham final:
Putintseva’s serve
Tomljanovic’s forehand
Net points
1. Putintseva’s Serve
Putintseva targeted Tomljanovic’s forehand return with slice serves, wide on the Deuce court or down the T on the AD court. They brought her great results.
On the Deuce court, Putintseva won 14 of 21 points (67%) that featured a slider wide, including 6 of 7 (86%) 2nd serve points. Interestingly, Tomljanovic managed to pick up Putintseva’s strategy from the middle of the second set and won some points, but she was only efficient against 1st serves.
While the majority of forehand return errors were extracted on Deuce court serves, Putintseva finished the match with a higher winning percentage on AD court T serves. She won 10 of 11 points, for a 91% win-rate.
Deuce court wide serves
1st serves won: 8/14 (57%), including 5 return errors
2nd serves won: 6/7 (86%), including 2 return errors
AD court T serves
1st serves won: 9/10 (90%), including 1 return error
2nd serves won: 1/1 (100%), including 1 return error
