N.Gilis v T.Gilis – VITAGEN Singapore Open Final Analysis

It was a sibling battle in the women’s final at the VITAGEN Singapore Open 2023 as Belgian sisters Nele and Tinne Gilis went head to head for the seventh time on the PSA Tour. Nele lead 5-1 coming into both players’ first Gold event final and she managed to come through a tough five-set clash to extend her lead over Tinne and claim a third World Tour title.

Our friends at Cross Court Analytics have taken a closer look at the statistics of the match which took both players up to their highest rankings. Nele up to World No.4 and Tinne up to World No.9.

Result: [3] Nele Gilis (BEL) bt [4] Tinne Gilis (BEL) 3-2: 11-6, 12-10, 8-11, 5-11, 11-4 (82m)

Winners & Errors

Nele is renowned for her athleticism and attritional play but not enough credit seems to be given to her finishing abilities once she has earned the chance to take the ball short. Nele’s backhand drop seems to be her best finishing shot, from both off the ground or on the volley, she cuts across the ball with her strings to leave the ball very short in the front left corner and with a simple, steady swing, it rarely misses.

The graphics below shows both of these points perfectly. The first graphic shows the consistency of Nele’s play and confirms the backhand supremacy. Nele only hit four errors in the entire match, zero of those errors came from the backhand side, which is the side where she was attacking most. The second graphic shows that 48.4% of Nele’s winners came from mid court on her backhand.

Therefore, not only is Nele using her fitness and athletic ability to not make errors but she is purposefully working the ball into the back corners (60% of pre-winners were hit to the back two corners) then looking to intercept on the backhand side and take the ball in short to find the winner.

Similarly, Tinne also favours the backhand side for her winners. This may have been something that the pair were coached at a young age and now feel very comfortable taking the ball short on that side. Tinne does appear to have more variety in where her winners come from however as she was able to find more joy in the front and back forehand corners. Her forehand attacking boast contributed heavily to this.

Volleying

Although the pair have similarities in their swings, their game styles are quite different. Nele is by far the more attritional player and opts to lengthen the rallies and hit more to the back corners and wait patiently for her opportunity to attack. Whereas Tinne is more proactive in taking the ball short and opening the court up with volleys and angles.

The graphic below shows Tinne’s desire to volley as she lead the volleying stats in every game, which is something that is quite irregular for someone who lost the match. Typically, the player who volleys more tends to be in control of the rallies and comes out on top, but not when the opponent is someone as physically strong as Nele.

The older sister possesses such strong movement that she is able to absorb so much pressure in all four corners and seems to be quite happy to let certain players volley more as she knows that she will reach the next ball and counter attack. A tactic that is not possible to adopt without strong movement, superb fitness and a confident mindset.

Games 3 & 4

Nele lead 2-0 but Tinne fought back in strong fashion. The graphic below shows the points breakdown from games three and four and attention has to be paid to the amount of winners that Tinne is forced to hit against her sister. Of the 22 points that Tinne won in games three and four, 19 of them were winners. This is an impressive stat from two angles. Angle one is that it should come as a great confidence boost to Tinne that she can hit so many winners against one of the best movers in the women’s game.

Angle two further illustrates the stinginess of Nele and how she refuses to give points away cheaply. She forced her sister to hit the winners and if Tinne wasn’t able to find them, she wasn’t winning the points. It again is quite irregular that a player would lose two games but only make one error in those games.

During the 82 minute clash, both players were forced to cover a lot of ground to keep retrieving the ball. Tinne covered 3,561 metres whilst Nele covered slightly more at 3,579 metres. To cover that amount of ground whilst constantly lunging and changing direction whilst also trying to concentrate on hitting quality shots and maintaining that quality for over an hour and twenty minutes is very impressive. We’re certainly looking forward to more Gilis clashes in the future.

For more about Cross Court Analytics, visit their website here.

The full match is availabe to watch back on SQUASHTV in the replay section. Click here to watch it back.

Match Highlights