great effort laura, and 40 points to show for it

Ah, what a great pity, but at least Laura takes from this qualification a very well deserved 40 ranking points.

It does appear to have been a tremendously gutsy, fighting performance from Laura.

Looking at the statistics, she was actually outscored on points 92 to 78, and had 99 serves as against 71  ( OK, much of that serve difference in one game   )  and was still so close to taking it to a final set.

She took 3 out of 7 BP chances, intriguingly each of her breaks immediately followed a Krajicek break, only once at 4 - 5 in the first set failing to break back.  Especially notable of course was her break back after the frustration of eventually being broken in THAT GAME.  Krajicek's BP stats were 4 / 14, so I think pretty successful there if you took out THAT GAME where she got there in the end.

The most amazing statistic to my mind is only 1 Double Fault by Laura ( 4 by Krajicek )  Remember US Open FQR last year when on her own admission she could hardly hold her racquet properly on serving and served 22 DFs, a great portion near the end. Seems to have been one hell of an improvement in mental toughness and composure since then.

Unforced error stats on the face of it are pretty unbelievable to the extent that I probably don't believe them !  These are always a bit in the eye of the beholder, but for posperity on the Aus Open site they read :  Laura  2,  Krajicek  8.  I guess she was at least being extremely consistent anyway.

This from a girl still six days short of her 16th birthday, and I remain full of optimism for the future.

Over the last couple of weeks she has shown real quality, great fight and new levels of composure.

The future looks very good to me   

-- Edited by indiana on Friday 15th of January 2010 02:06:46 AM

lol. Take the unforced error count with a pinch of salt.
Anyway, I wasn't too displeased with the loss because the stats seem to suggest Laura played well but was just beaten by the better player on the day.
73% first serves and only 1 df.
I don't know whether she was taking something off her first serve (which may account for a relatively low 1st serve win %) but that is consistant stuff.

-- Edited by Maza1987 on Friday 15th of January 2010 02:06:51 AM

deuce on Cav's opening service game...

Wickmayer holds to love in no time at all, 2-0.

4-0 in 13 mins, Cav having won just 6 points so far.

First set Wickmayer 6-0 in 20 minutes.  At least it can't get any worse.