Strong field and lots of Brits here. It's on outdoor hard not clay, though not many hard court tourneys left so hopefully Mel, Sarah and Amanda can all get some good wins here and hopefully Becky Llewellyn can win a few matches in the qualies.
Rd2: V Lukic (Ser)(3) bt R Llewellyn (GB) 6-2, 6-2
Rebecca secured only her 3rd win since last September in rd1, double bagelling the unranked Italian but was completely outplayed in the final qualies round by Lukic. 19 year old Lukic is ranked about 88 places higher at 265 but had only played two matches in 2007 prior to this tourney, losing both to lower ranked players so I thought Rebecca might have a chance. Lukic had an incredible 2006 though, making something like four 10K finals and then a string of semis in 25Ks and 50Ks.
For Rebecca, she badly needs to find some more wins soon, at the moment she's getting outplayed by everyone in the 200-400 range and she's going to be tumbling down the rankings very quickly soon unless she finds the form which took her to the top 300 last season. This week she's lost points from making the semis in Bath last year...doesn't now have anything to defend till start of May when a huge chunk of points come off from making a 25K semi in Spain.
I think she needs to drop down to 10Ks where she'll be seeded and coming up against players ranked in the 500s and 600s in rd1 rather than 200s and 300s.
Mel certaintly could have hoped for a better draw, being seeded 4th, I'm not sure whether she'll win this one in her current singles form. My first thought was what on earth is Klaschka doing ranked down at 235. I watched her twice at Wimbledon 2005, she qualified and then hammered Bally 3 and 2 in rd1 and should have beaten Dementieva in rd2, ended up losing 8-6 in the 3rd. From what I can remember, she has an excellent return and is a brilliant athlete. Bally was made to look toothless that day, and it takes a very good player to do that on grass, Bally was letting rip on everything and Klaschka was just a solid wall from the back, Bally couldn't get anything past her. Klaschka also hits it very hard and flat, she doesn't go for the lines with her shots, gives herself a good margin for error but she hits with such pace that it's still effective.
Klaschka reached a high in the 130s in 2005, just wasn't able to quite make it onto the WTA tour. Has had an average start to 2007, losing in rd2 of a couple of challengers.
Sarah has by far the best draw of the Brits, Balducci is ranked 665 and hasn't been past rd2 of a 10K since last August. The Italians must have been a bit short of wc options, not sure why else they would have given her one.
Goerges is a potential banana skin for Amanda, she's 18 and rapidly improving. I saw her at Sutton and was impressed on two counts. This is her pic:
She qualified for Sutton and Tipton. In Tipton she beat a player ranked 288ish 2 and 0 in rd1. She then qualified for WTA Doha last month and beat another qualifier in rd2 before losing to Kuznetsova in a reasonably close match in rd2 (7-5, 6-1).
Sarah's loss was very disappointing after such a great week in Greece, Balducci is ranked a lot lower at 690, has done nothing much else this year and got completely hammered in rd2 by Serra Zanetti.
Maybe the courts were weird ?
Mel and Amanda did well to get sets, I didn't expect either to win their matches.
Btw...how come a lot of these East European players look a lot better in their ITF photos than in the flesh ?? they must really glam up for them
Mel is now training at the new centre in Roehampton for the next two weeks before competing again. A wise decision, she needs some time out to sort things on her game with her coach after 5 straight losses
