No Fairytale Ending This Time: Broady Misses Out on Ningbo Challenger Final

Britain's Liam Broady just about fell short in the semi-final of the Ningbo Challenger as he lost in a deciding set to the huge-serving Petr Bar Biryukov 4-6, 6-1, 3-6

There would have been a lot of expectations coming into this one from Broady with this being a huge opportunity of getting into another big Challenger final. But Biryukov was the superior player on the day and created a lot of issues for the Brit in a multitude of ways.

When dissecting the way the opening set got away from Broady, the most eye-catching difference is the Russian's ability to take the racket out of Broady's hands without much difficulty. This was problematic for Liam on any serve that dipped in quality, a neutral rally or playing a bit too safe.

This semi-final took an enormous tactical adjustment for Broady due to the fact that the Russian was a left-handed player. Usually Broady would be content trading cross-court into an opponents vulnerability, much like he did versus Naoya Honda and Jake Delaney in the previous rounds of this event. Here he was directing traffic into a strength against a fellow-leftie. It is not natural for Broady to seek out forehand down the lines as a predominant pattern and it was hard for him.

On top of that, Biryukov's game-style is quite random in terms of his tendency to just do pretty much anything at unpredictable times. That can throw you off as an opponent completely. Some of things he was doing from a tactical standpoint were unbelievably rare. For example, in this video below, Biryukov decides to casually walk in and take his return of serve nearly on top of the service box. It was deliberate as he is psychologically telling Broady that he has to expect the unexpected at all times.

Another example of the Russian trying to mess with the head of Broady sees him crouching down when waiting to receive serve. It is not something anyone would implement regularly at all, but he is trying to disrupt the Brit in any way possible. The Russian may end up losing the point very easily, but he is hoping he gets some leeway psychologically by throwing this into the mixer. Broady was probably wondering what on earth was happening as he is about to prepare to serve.

In my opinion, Broady played a great second set. I felt he was a lot more aggressive when he needed to be and I felt like he exploited how his opponent was feeling energy-wise during that phase of the contest. The point in which Broady breaks first in the second set comes from superb utilisation of the slice. The tactical intention of this was to prevent Biryukov from having a viable ball to get on top of and attack. The slice takes all of that away and subsequently they get entangled in a slice-dominant rally that leads to the Brit deliberately exhausting him out. Excellent from Broady in so many ways.

The remainder of the second set was a procession. Broady was stabilising from ground, finding some of the rhythm that was not there so much in the first set and he was the physically superior player at that point. But it also worth mentioning that Biryukov was completely absent in terms of concentration and focus for the last few games. He resorted to being even more random, but this time with plays that were never going to keep him in a set. I got the impression as a viewer that he had given up on the set to build up the fuel tank for the deciding set. This was proven right.

In the below video, Biryukov throws in an odd underarm serve when the set is getting away from him. But yet again this was deliberate in the sense that it adds to disrupting the Broady game further and longing for some Broady baggage in a crucial deciding set.

The level of focus increased predictably from Biryukov at the beginning of the third set and this was effectively a single set shootout. I felt Broady was well-placed at this point, both with his tennis and his physical side, but I also felt that the match was not going to be on the Brit's terms anyhow. That rang true in the end.

So Broady gets broken in the fourth game of the decider. He opens the game with a cheap forehand error on top of the baseline. Then the Russian executes a forced chip and charge into the net that encourages a passing shot error from the Brit thereafter. The break eventually comes from the Russian's unsettling game-style of chaos yet again. This time he gives Broady a soft-ball return of serve from out of blue and in doing so he throws the Brit off.

This looks like a poor error initially to the eye, but it is another example of not being prepared for what is about to happen. His opponent had been taking huge cuts on return in the first two sets but this time gives him something that is the polar opposite and succeeds.

Biryukov was fairly comfortable in closing the encounter from there. Not necessarily through simplified big-serving, but because of everything alongside the heavy serving. The soft ball strategy continued to be ever-present in the game where he serves the match out to progress to a second ever Challenger final.

Where does this leave Broady overall? First and foremost, this tournament has been a positive one. The Brit won consecutive matches for the first time since the summer at the Newport Challenger and made his first semi-final at any level since the run in Busan back in April. The goal would have been to build match confidence to end the season on a high and I think he is on the road of achieving that. Broady heads to Taipei hoping to keep the momentum going now. I am sure he will.