Saina Nehwal won the Philippines Open crown at 16, and PV Sindhu had a World Championship bronze medal at 17. Tanvi Sharma, 16, following in their footsteps, showed she has the game to fit the prodigy billing, but didn’t quite have the gameplan in her first big Tour final.
Beiwen Zhang, the 34-year-old American needed to stick to basics and wasn’t stretched too much as Sharma couldn’t take the fight deep in the Super 300 US Open final at Council Bluffs.
There is little doubt that Sharma has both the talent and temperament to wade into battles in seniors, for she showed in the mid-set that she could turn the knife and close out, once she found a toehold.
But it was on either side, playing from the trickier faster side that the shuttle control went missing, and the bird sailed out far more frequently than she would have liked. Sharma’s Plan A is always maxing her ability to play criss-cross, and her wide repertoire grants her the capability to pull off making opponents run this way and then that, chasing the shuttle on either flanks. She also has dependable smashes and drops that can make use of the open court once she sets it up with a flank attack.
But Beiwen Zhang correctly nailed down the youngster’s still uncertain defense when she’s forced to run behind and needs to haul back to the mid court. Catching her out of position, brought Zhang most of the Sharma errors.
Sharma doesn’t entirely commit at the net, where she has much work to do. So if her straightforward attack from the midcourt or the back doesn’t reel in the points from her attack, she is prone to hacking at a few shots from impatience and piling up unnecessary error counts. Drifts can be make-or-break on most courts and Zhang showed Sharma that her attack, though fairly smooth in converting defense to offense, isn’t quite pacy enough when she’s forced to parry a faster flurry from the opponent. She simply got caught up in responding to Zhang’s quicker strokes, and accuracy on the lines expectedly suffered. But she’s only 16.
She will learn in due course to not get dragged into a pace set by the opponent and to slow things down when they start dictating rallies. Sharma’s defense didn’t exactly crumble, but against the Top 10s (or event former Top Tens), anticipating can get mighty blurred, once they succeed in hurrying and harrying their opponents. It’s how Sharma’s game came undone in Set 1 & 3.
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In what has generally been many seasons in the doldrums for Indian women’s singles, Sharma making finals after a week of good wins will count as heartening. But how she responds to this defeat and continues the momentum, will determine if Tanvi Sharma can make the breakthrough this year. Both Sindhu and Saina lost plenty and hustled before they settled into Top 10. But faltering at the finals will need urgent remedies than contentment over making finals, even if Sharma is “just 16.”
The duo’s hunger and drive was as insatiable as their proclivity to attack. It’s what Tanvi Sharma will need to learn.
