Week 36 - WTA 125 Series ($125K) - Huangcangyu WTA Suzhou Ladies Open, Suzhou, China Hard

PockyTastic · Futures level

Week 36 - WTA 125 Series ($125K) - Huangcangyu WTA Suzhou Ladies Open, Suzhou, China Hard

PaulM · Tennis legend

Gamble paid off switching here at the last minute and jumping on a plane from Japan. Even if she goes out in round 1 it's decent prize money for her. And she might get a kind draw.

PaulM · Tennis legend

Or not. Em gets top seed cepelova :(

AliBlahBlah · All-time great

PaulM wrote:
Or not. Em gets top seed cepelova :(

Not great, but Cepelova was still in Flushing Meadows Friday morning NYC time, by virtue of her dubs match.

Perhaps that sort of schedule will affect her badly... hopefully.

steven · Tennis legend

L32: Emily Webley-Smith WR 344 v (1) Jana Cepelova (SVK) WR 65 (CH 50 in May)

PaulM · Tennis legend

Em playing both singles and doubles on Tuesday. Her exhibition match was cancelled due to rain.

Draw is frustrating but it was the right move to come here. She could have been playing an unranked local for 15 points, and she rarely gets to play top 100 players so it will be a good experience.

AliBlahBlah · All-time great

The WTA will be providing free streaming for the top two courts in this tournament: http://www.wtatennis.com/live-stream/title/wta-125k-series--live-streaming

PaulM · Tennis legend

The Chinese National Tennis Association is also streaming matches (and keeping bits and pieces recorded).

You can see the last few games of Emily practice match against WR#100 Friedsamm (which did go ahead afterall) here:-

www.tennis.org.cn/living/women/2014-08-31/445504.html

She lost 75 61, but a good effort. Shame it doesn't show the closing stages of the first, would have been interesting to see how that went.

-- Edited by PaulM on Monday 1st of September 2014 10:04:21 AM

PaulM · Tennis legend

The first part of Em's match against Friedsamm here:

www.tennis.org.cn/living/women/2014-08-31/445503.html

She played, really, really well. Was serving some absolute bombs, great to hear a phew gasps from the crowd!

PaulM · Tennis legend

Due to rain Emily will now be second match in the un streamed Court 1.

EDIT - Emily's match is now cancelled. There are about 20 people on each court trying to dry the place with towels before the next deluge. Stream quality on the WTA site is very high, so hopefully she gets on one of the two big courts tomorrow.

-- Edited by PaulM on Tuesday 2nd of September 2014 08:29:32 AM

PaulM · Tennis legend

Em lost 63 63 but played pretty well, had a bad start quickly going down *0-3 but pulled herself back to 3-3* and very nearly managed to break from 40-15 down but Cepelova just caught the back of the baseline with an offbalance forehand and Emily could only float the ball back for an easy mid-court put away.

In the second set she battled hard and saved 2 match points to break for *3-5. She then saved 3 more match points but unfortunately received a second serve foot-fault on game point, and Cepelova got it over the line at the 6th time of asking.

Overall there was just too much firepower from Cepelova and she wasn't missing as many first and second balls as we needed her to.

A bit of bad luck with her draws these two weeks, just one of those things. Could easily have picked up 15 points here but she got to play two top 100 players and make a few quid. By no means a bad trip even without a win. Looks like she is sticking around, she's only just outside the cut for qualifying at the Premier in Tokyo in 2 weeks time, and I'm guessing is half a dozen or so spots out for Hong Kong next week at the minute (I'm trying to get that confirmed with those on tennisforum in the know). Good on her.

Full match is here: http://www.tennis.org.cn/living/women/2014-09-03/445763.html - it takes about 5mins on my computer for the match to actually load up after pressing the play button.

-- Edited by PaulM on Wednesday 3rd of September 2014 01:49:51 PM

PaulM · Tennis legend

An absolutely horrible evening on the doubles court (for Mayr in particular) sees Em's participation in the event end with a very heavy 60 61 loss to Eguchi/Hozumi.

AliBlahBlah · All-time great

No consolation from the doubles, losing 0-6 1-6