Marion Bartoli won against Justine Henin 1:6, 7:5, 6:1 in Wimbledon today.

It’s a surprising win of course, but if we dig a little deeper, we can understand why this happened.

©EPA / G. Penny

Why couldn’t Justine Henin keep up?

Justine’s shots are not really best suited for grass except her backhand slice. She puts a lot of topspin on the ball, especially with the forehand.

If she plays on clay court the ball kicks off the ground and is hard to control. But the grass dampens the bounce and the ball actually comes into the perfect height for attacking groundstroke shots.

Justine also tried to play her usual controlled tennis with very few unforced errors and trying to move her opponent around.

Her main goal is to neutralize opponent’s attacks and then go into a counter attack when she can. Or just wait for an unforced error.

This doesn’t work really well on grass except if you play a similar type of opponent.

Justine also prefers to stand a little further behind the baseline to have the time to pick her spot and send her controlled top spin there.

Marion Bartoli on the other hand plays forehand and backhand with both hands and she hits the ball almost flat.

Her shots fly almost in a straight line and bounce very low. Bartoli played much more aggressive tennis staying inside the baseline most of the time.

I see two main reasons why Bartoli won today:

1. She played much closer to the lines than Henin. She obviously had nothing to lose and attacked more but Henin could have figured that out and adjust her “targeting”.

2. She played many more down the line shots surprising Henin many times.

Typically when you play a deep cross court shot you expect your opponent to return cross court since they need to cover more of the court if they return down the line.

But playing on grass allows you to “bend this rule”. Why?

Because the tennis on grass is so fast that when you hit a solid down the line shot, your opponent doesn’t have the time to get around the ball for a good short cross court.

And I noticed Henin expecting the cross court reply and then she was surprised with the down the line shot from Bartoli.

She wasn’t able to exploit these down the line shots from Bartoli because:
- she was surprised and reacted a split second too late
- the ball was fast and low and Henin wasn’t able to punish Bartoli with a short cross court shot

The end result of this exchange was that Marion Bartoli was able to get out of defensive situation and turn it into offense with her powerful down the line shots.

If she played Henin on clay with the same strategy, Bartoli would have lost 2 and 2.

In my personal opinion Bartoli is more talented than Henin.

She is obviously overweight and yet she is still able to run surprisingly fast, she has fantastic hand-eye coordination and feel for the ball.

If Bartoli hits the ball the best she can and Henin hits the ball the best she can, I see Marion Bartoli coming on top.

She also dealt with Henin’s low and short slices with ease which tells me that Bartoli has an exceptional racquet head control and touch.

Marion Bartoli of course immediately reminds us of Monica Seles with her two-handed forehand and backhand.

She also tried to play the same tennis and today she managed to put everything together.

Aggressive shots from inside the baseline, no loopy top-spins but low flat risky down the line shots which out the opponent on defense, dogged determination to fight it to end, no fear of the opponent, rising up to the situation and one more thing:

MARION BARTOLI: Well, to tell you the truth, as I said on BBC a few minutes ago, I saw Pierce Brosnan in the crowd, which is one of my favorite actor. I love his movies.

I said to myself, it’s not possible I play so bad in front of him. Because he watch me and I play so bad it was unbelievable.

So I try to feel it a bit more the ball, play more smartly.

I saw he was cheering for me, so I said, Oh, maybe it’s good.

I kept going and I won, so maybe a little bit for Pierce Brosnan.

So maybe all the logical explanations above are just totally off and all it took was James Bond cheering for Marion Bartoli.