Good serve makes it 30-30

Another unforced error 40-30

Katie gone to pieces, I'll post again if it looks like she can be bothered puttin the ball in play

Poor stuff from Katie, after double faulting a couple of times, having about 57 game points and making unforced errors on them, Katie is broken. Trails *5-1

Katie showed in this match that if she had been on form she could have pushed Misa a bit more, sadly she hit far too many UE, especially when she was on top of rallies, so she lost by a tame scoreline. Still it's progress and hopefully she can build on this result this summer and not just plateau like so many of our other girls have done after winning a round at Wimbledon.

Sadly today, Katie's game just matched up so, so well for Krajicek who plays very similar from the baseline but is just a lot more solid. Katie didn't play too badly from the baseline, but Krajicek clearly loves to exchange flat, hard groundies all day long and as Mervatron says, she was a brick wall, only making 5 ues in the entire match. Katie just got stuck in a hitting match and very quickly ran out of ideas, just trying to hit harder and harder and inevitably making the error in the end as she doesn't yet have the ability to hit the lines consistently point after point for a best of 3 sets match, (and to be honest, not many do :biggrin) which is what she's need to win playing that way as Krajicek just gave her nothing .

I agree totally with Mervatron, Katie has got a good base with the power she possesses but in order to live with top 50 players she needs to add much more variety, she was too straight up and down, no changes of pace, spin or trying to use the angles to open things up as Cavaday did so effectively against Hingis. Maybe it was the pressure of the occasion but tactics-wise Katie just seemed to freeze and there was no plan B

There were quite a few times when she had short or mid-court balls and instead of going for broke and trying to hit the lines, she could have tried to take the pace off, just get it deep and get into the net...I think she only got into the net about twice in the match

The big thing she needs to work on though was her serve which was Dementieva-like today, something like 8 double faults and all at crucial moments which you just can't afford with someone like Krajicek banging down bombs at the other end. However, to be fair to Katie, the serve has always been her main weakness (I remember her saying that a couple of years ago in an interview) and she has worked hugely on it and it will only get better. When she did get the 1st serve in, it was quite effective. It was interesting to hear the technical advice which Sam Smith was giving....it looks like she lets the ball toss drop too low, doesn't get much extension, it enables her to get a fair bit of slice on it but she's not going to get many in that way. Like Lee Childs she needs to put more spin on it to get a higher percentage, to actually bring the ball down into the box, when you're just hitting your serves totally flat, they're more likely to go long.

Arka, did you watch Mirza's match? Like Katie's shes did work with her serve, its absolutely abysmal, sorry to say! Even the commentators were moaning about it! Saying she doesnt extend her arm right through instead the elbow is halfway below he waist! Btw, i like Mirza's groundies, had she got a better serve motion, she could beat Petrova.Sorry if its off topic.

Katie O'B

Wanted more from her here....