mbturner wrote:

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Heather lost eight consecutive service games, finally won one and then was broken again to lose the match. She would take getting to the final at the start of the week but I'm not sure that this serving performance will give her much encouragement for the next few tournaments.

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Welcome to the forum, at least to posting on it 

Heather lost a lot of games over that end of first set to 1-5* final set period apart from a couple of return games. But I don't from the stats see a real serve problem but more ( and maybe more worryingly ) a general problem.

Her specific serve stats overall were 3 aces, 2 DFs and 59% first serves in. So she wasn't donating DFs, and combining that with her first serve in % it looks unlikely that it was just being landed any way how just to be put away.

No, to me this looks classically like a momentum thing that in the women's game, with serve generally much less dominant and many fewer 'free points', can lead to multiple game periods when one player gets on top enough to win multiple games, whether through an upturn in their game, a downturn in the other's game or a combination.

Not unusually again, the finishing line can suddenly change that momentum a bit through tightening by the leader and /or more swinging free by the player behind. For whatever reasons we saw that again here until Heather had almost caught up and it looked much more on the line again.

So sorry, in this case I don't see damning evidence of a poor serving performance such as we do often see from the direct serve stats. I do see a very bad run of games and as I said that looks indicative of more general problems unless Doi was suddenly playing extremely well, just too good. I wasn't following the scores wishing Heather's serve to improve tbough probably it could have a bit but much more just wishing her general game to improve.