We talked about feel good wins last week in Montreal...

Cincinnati brought us THEE feel good wins of the season.

Whilst qualifier Borna Coric became the lowest-ranked Masters 1000 champion in the history of the tour, a few hours previous fellow qualifier Caroline Garcia picked up the third WTA 1000 title of her career.

From #4 in the world back in 2018, Caro finished the following three years ranked #45, #43 and #75 respectively.

It's been a long road full of bumps and hurdles but finally Garcia has returned to the kind of level many have come to expect of her, tallying the most wins on tour since June and winning two WTA 250 titles to sit alongside her WTA 1000 trophy.

What's making Garcia so dangerous at the moment? We've taken a look at her recent stats and her win over Petra Kvitova in the final of Cincinnati to get the full picture.

Caro Serving Under Pressure

"Garcia leads the field in aces this year."

This has been a big point of discussion for commentators during Caro's matches. They're not wrong - at 284 aces, she is slightly ahead of Elena Rybakina and 100 aces above fifth-placed Aryna Sabalenka.

But it's ace-percentage that tells us the most about a player i.e. how many aces a player hits per serve struck. Garcia is still up there with the best at 8.0% but Osaka, Rybakina and Pliskova best her by a whole percent. She was also ninth at Cincinnati alone, players such as Rogers, Sakkari, Osaka and Krejcikova hitting more aces more serve.

Point is, though Garcia is hitting plenty of aces, statistically there are better spot-servers on the tour. What I'd argue is most impressive about her ability to ace her opponents is how well she does this under pressure.

• Garcia saved 30/36 break points she faced in Cincinnati, equivalent to an 83.3% break points saved rate. This was better than anyone else at the tournament.

• Garcia has also saved 223/332 break points she's faced overall this year. That's a 67.2% break points saved rate - better than anyone else in the top-50!

Against Petra Kvitova in the final, she was able to saved all eight break points she faced. On four of these break points, her serve went unreturned.

Under pressure against Kvitova, throughout the rest of the tournament and throughout the entirety of the year, Garcia has been able to hit her spots under pressure.

Garcia On The Rise

Return

You'll likely be aware of Garcia's obscene ability to take on the return of serve exceptionally early. This ability alone notched her a win over Iga Swiatek on clay a month ago in Warsaw (Swiatek's only loss on clay this year) and she used it again on the quick courts of Cincinnati to send her opponents reeling.

Against Kvitova, it worked especially well. Unless Kvitova hit her spot on serve, perfectly keeping it out of the reach of Garcia, the ball would be sent back to her toes affording the Czech no time whatsoever to set up her plus one shot.

This is essential to stave off the incredible power of Kvitova, not just to neutralise the serve but to send it back quick enough that the next ball won't be blootered away for a winner. Caro is one of the few players with the feel required to pull it off.

It's particularly interesting that Garcia is excelling in this department given she's dead last in the top-50 in terms of break percentage this year at 26.8%. Over the course of her last three tournaments however, her average has been upped to 35.8% which would put her about middle of the board this season on return.

For all the fantastic serves she's delivering under pressure, this is most certainly the area of her game that's had the biggest impact on her results over the course of this season.

Absorbing Depth

This brings me onto the title of subsection - Garcia's ability to take balls on the rise shows up in more than just her early return-style.

This makes the match-up for Kvitova a pretty bad one when Garcia is on. Even if she found herself able to get that first deep linear strike into play, Garcia's hand skills to get the ball back into a deep unattackable spot made it very difficult for Kvitova to craft an effective one-two punch.

So Garcia's ability to perform under pressure and to feel the ball back into play off of deep linear strikes? Put these factors together and we were treated to a crucial/genius defensive point from Garcia at 3-2.

How Caroline Garcia won the 2022 Cincinnati Masters

"When you do bad, people forget about you pretty fast & forget what you did in the past. As soon as you get a couple of wins in a row under your belt & play better, it's like you are a top star again. Like you go from a loser to maybe one of the best players right now."

Just like that, Caroline Garcia is back at the forefront of the public's conscience.

She's been serving great when it's mattered most and her feel and ability to redirect pace is proving the perfect antidote to the typical hammer-sized blows of the WTA (defeated Kvitova, Sabalenka and Sakkari this week).

I'd like to end with an interesting comparison. Back in March, Kvitova played Iga Swiatek at the Miami Open. The parallels between Kvitova's service games there and here are kinda... spooky.

• Kvitova was broken three times.

• In Miami, Kvitova won 27 service points in one or two swings of her racket - she won 28 in Cincinnati.

• In Miami, Swiatek won 19 return points in one or two swings of her racket - Garcia won 18 in Cincinnati.

• There were 10 other Kvitova service points played in Miami in the 5+ shot rally length with Swiatek and Kvitova splitting the points evenly. In Cincinnati, there were 9 with Kvitova winning one more point.

How Kvitova's service games played out in Cincinnati was near-identical to how they played out in Miami... when Swiatek was just getting her godly run up-and-running.

It's a throwaway comparison for a laugh.

At the the same time, there's no doubt are some similarities to Swiatek in the level of return aggression Garcia was able to maintain throughout this tournament.

... Garcia GOAT era incoming?