Flavia Pennetta vs. Roberta Vinci – US Open final Live Stream and Match Preview
Hannah Wilks in Tennis 12 Sep 2021
Roberta Vinci (credit: Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)
Flavia Pennetta vs. Roberta Vinci takes place later today in the final of the 2015 US Open.
This US Open final is scheduled to start at 20:00 BST.
In the UK, the match airs live on Sky Sports/Sky Sports 3 HD (and online here), while you can also watch and bet on live tennis with bet365 here:
Preview: Italy will see its second women’s Grand Slam champion crowned on Saturday as Pennetta takes on Vinci at the US Open. This all-Italian clash – the first all-Italian Slam final in the Open Era, and the first between two women over 30 – is the product of one of the more unpredictable days in women’s tennis in recent memory. After rain postponed the women’s semifinals, originally scheduled for Thursday, to Friday afternoon, Pennetta and Vinci emerged the unlikely victors and one of the two will join 2010 French Open champion Francesca Schiavone in the small circle of Grand Slam winners. Both women will be playing in their first Grand Slam final, but 26th seed Pennetta has at least been to a semifinal before: At this very event in 2013. New York has always been good to Pennetta, who was the first Italian woman to be ranked inside the top 10, making the quarterfinals or better at the US Open six times since 2008. She lost to Victoria Azarenka in the final four in 2013, but this time she was up against second seed Simona Halep – or her evil twin, perhaps, because the woman who turned up on Friday bore little to no resemblance to the one who had scored a dazzling victory over Azarenka on Wednesday. Pennetta, on the other hand, had clearly not skipped a beat since her own three-set quarterfinal victory over fifth seed Petra Kvitova on Wednesday and positively romped through to the final, playing a smart, solid match and snuffing out a threatened Halep resurgence in the second set for a 6-1, 6-3 victory. It would have been the likely story of the day as Pennetta became the third woman in 2015, after Lucie Safarova at the French Open and Garbine Muguruza at Wimbledon, to reach her first Grand Slam semifinal. But as Roberta Vinci took the court, it became clear that Pennetta’s triumph wasn’t even going to be the story of the day in Italy. 0-4 in matches against Serena Williams, 0-8 in sets against the woman who had won 33 straight Grand Slam matches, Vinci produced what must have been one of the biggest shocks in tennis, if not sporting, history as she won 2-6, 6-4, 6-4 to end Williams’s bid for the calendar-year Grand Slam. It would be useless to pretend that Williams played her best, but it would also be useless to pretend that the quality of Vinci’s own performance didn’t have a lot to do with the result: She served well, adapted to a more aggressive game plan, and kept stinging Williams with sweet winners and surprising deft volleys whenever the world no. 1 looked like getting a grip on herself. And when it came to closing out the match, she was icy calm. Both Vinci and Pennetta have played some of the best tennis of their careers in recent days, but who will prevail on Saturday? The forced lack of a rest day might actually help both, with less time to reflect on the scale of the occasion, so there is no obvious advantage there – although Pennetta’s win was altogether more calmly accomplished (as well as in a shorter time) so she will not have to contend with the emotional letdown after a career-best win which can have consequences for the next match, as we were reminded this week by Kevin Anderson. Pennetta leads the head-to-head with Vinci 5-4, although they have not played since 2013. Their last match, oddly enough, came in the quarterfinals of the US Open when Pennetta won 6-4, 6-1, although their overall hard court head-to-head is 1-1 (Vinci having won in Tokyo in 2009). There will be no surprises for each other in their games, having grown up together – they won the French Open junior doubles title together – and competed many times alongside each other in Fed Cup, and neither player is exactly a power hitter, although Pennetta hits a bigger ball off both wings than Vinci who relies heavily on slice. It’s a very close call with plenty of unknowns – it’s almost impossible to predict how anybody will react when they play their first Grand Slam final – but I will go with Pennetta. She has the better record of winning big titles, and her game won’t be disrupted by Vinci’s tricks the way that a bigger hitter’s can be. Moreover, she played her semifinal well within herself, while Vinci could well be set for a letdown. As this most unpredictable of US Opens draws to a close, however, who really knows what to expect?
