I agree with the general sentiment.

On the plus side, the serving from both girls was outstanding - Laura's DF had been zero until the back end of the second set, which is extremely good by anyone's standards, but for her it is a revelation. Furthermore her second serve was NOT rolled in tamely as her very high win percentages confirm. Excellent.

I would also say that Laura's depth off both wings was extremely good - the number of balls that were out long was more than offset by the number of very deep balls that put Caroline on the back foot, producing errors or setting up Laura to win the point. I thought the balance was very good, and there were relatively few forehands hit over 10 feet beyond the baseline for no reason, which Laura can often do.

On the down side, whilst the commentators have been talking of improved movement from Laura, but I couldn't see it at all - there were a couple of games at the end of set 2 where she hustled big time to reach balls, which was good. But there were still so many balls which almost every other top pro would have reached easily that Laura didn't reach or in some cases didn't even try to. More than this, she still relies on her hands, her strength and brilliant shotmaking ability to allow her to hit groundstrokes off balance or out of position, rather than doing the basic micro footwork to be well set up for every ball - and this still produces UEs galore which could and should be fixed easily - I suspect that its a very hard habit to break, because all her coaches will have tried to get her to do this, but getting the mind to rewire her "automatic" instincts is hard. And I watched her return of serve very closely - her shotmaking is great where she has a swing at it, but her reactions are very slow and her movement is rather static - tons could be done here.......it's good, but with her skills it could be great.

I think those downsides will take a year or two to finally sort, assuming she ever is able (or willing) to fix them; but overall I thought she played a lot better than I had expected, looked very solid compared to match 1, had great depth and served a dream. I think her speed and fitness looks well below this time last year (which I think is disappointing) and combined with her injury (which clearly is affecting her), I think she has little to no chance against Li Na - but that's just the sort of challenge that Laura rises to........

Good luck!

A few random thoughts/stats after yesterdays match:

Laura won 37% of the points on Garcia's serve, and lost 22% on her own serve so although the scoreline was close Laura was the better player by some margin.

Last year Laura clinched her famous 2nd round win over Kim Clijsters on a tie-break, and she did the same in the second round this year. In between she lost all 9 tie-breaks she played, so about time she won one to keep the run under a year by one day!

Laura is now 7-0 against players outside the top 50 in grand slams, which shows how rarely she puts in a bad performance at the top events.

Laura played on the same court as Heather did the day before and their serve speeds were almost identical: both 110 mph quickest serve, ave. 1st serve speed 100mph for Laura vs 99mph for Heather. Laura's serve did a lot more damage though (at least in part due to the quality of the returner)