Jelena Ostapenko has a new favorite phrase: “At the end, I finished really confident.”
That’s what the 21-year-old Latvian said after her 7-6 (4), 6-0 win over Aliaksandra Sasnovich in the fourth round on Monday. And that’s what she said again after beating Dominika Cibulkova 7-5, 6-4 in the quarterfinals on Wednesday. Looking at how Ostapenko closed out both of those victories, it wasn’t a surprise to hear her talk about late-match surges in confidence. After serving up a second-set bagel to Sasnovich, she held serve at love to beat Cibulkova. Her last two shots on Wednesday were a forehand winner and a backhand winner, both of them belted without a hint of hesitation.
As Ostapenko also likes to say: “I’m not afraid to miss.”
Paradoxically, because of that, she’s making her shots. Her match with Cibulkova was rightly billed as a slugfest between two modest-sized players who wield as much power per pound as anyone in tennis. But when it came to dictating the rallies, it was no contest. Ostapenko ended up ahead in the winner count over Cibulkova by an astounding margin of 33 to six. Close to half of the Latvian’s 70 winning points came on her own ungettable shots.
WATCH—Match point from Ostapenko's win over Cibulkova in quarterfinals: