Assuming these correct, more good news from Sutton 

Anna really on a roll at the start of this season, semi final here should be taking her up to around WR 350 and her current CH is 356.  She is looking well capable of moving up quite a lot higher than that.

Good stuff from Naomi, more than defending her QF points from last year and maybe moving a bit closer top her CH of 183. A fair chance she will surpass it if she reaches the final.  She's got quite a lot of points to defend from the first half of 2009 so all points gained welcome to defend these and hopefully replace them with even better.

( edit :  Ah, in fact she lost her QF, so just basically defended last year's points )
 
Also it's been a good week from Heather after her rusty start to the year in the Aussie Open juniors.  She'll be moving up to a clear new CH which should be inside the top 500. 

-- Edited by indiana on Friday 5th of February 2010 04:44:18 PM

Yep that person was me.

I didn't see the first two sets, I came just as Naomi went for a bathroom break after the second set. I'll give the girl her credit, she was being aggresive and capitalising but Naomi was just pure awful. She could hardly get a first serve in, she was framing everything, she looked even slower than usual and she just didn't seem to be there mentally. I think maybe she does need a change of coach, I don't know. It wasn't even that she was being aggressive and making tons of errors. She just mentally wasn't there and it was just so weird.

As for Anna, thanks to all the trains being delayed I had to go to sutton by the longest route ever and when I came it was near the end. I watched a couple of games with Heather and she was hitting the ball so hard and flat and consistently whereas Barthel was just making a lot of errors and hitting the back fence on a couple of shots.

And Heather, I spoke with her before the match and she was nice and I was so impressed with her. From what I have heard from people I was expecting to see a girl who just stood 10ft behind the baseline and just frankly pushed but that wasn't the case at all. Sure there were patches where she inexplicably decided to defend even though being aggressive had been working so well but most of the time she was being aggressive and going for her shots. She hit some breathtaking winners and a couple of times toyed with her opponent with dropshot/lob combinations.

She's no Hingis as people have compared her to, but she has some nice variety (especially angles), she strikes the ball well and cleanly, she moves well and is very athletic and most importantly, she has a pretty good (especially first) serve which can only get better. Her service motion is pretty much perfect. The turning point was at 3-3 when she had three break points which she failed to convert. Her opponent hit a winner and a couple of unreturnable serves but they could have easily been chipped back. After losing the game she shouted out in frustration and threw her racket. From then on she really got on herself for every error, threw her racket a couple more times and just looked like she didn't believe in herself anymore.

It was clear that a lot of it was simply down to inexperience and the fact that the girl was coming up with so many winners/aces/unreturnables etc. AND the fact that she could move well too no doubt got into Heather's head. And Heather started to go for silly shots. But I was still so impressed with her and even though she hasn't got a fraction of the hype yet, hopefully throughout this year she'll be able to earn the hype that is surrounding Laura right now, because she at least deserves some of it. I'm really excited to see her (and Laura too) at wimbledon this year. I really hope and believe that they could both take some names there.

-- Edited by Tutu on Friday 5th of February 2010 04:16:47 PM

And by the way Heather has a WC into the Midland 100k next week if you didn't know. I hope she can do something there.

SMC1809 wrote:

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So did Cav lose the final set, or win it despite being awful?

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Yes, I'm confused too.  Based on Tutu's report, Stanciute must have been amazingly bad if she lost the third set 6 -1 so I assume that's not true 

Confirmation of result, please.

-- Edited by indiana on Friday 5th of February 2010 04:30:11 PM

From BBC website :

Friday, 5 February, 2010
The LTA AEGON Women's Pro-Series, Sutton Tennis Academy, Sutton, Surrey: Quarter-finals:

Mallory Cecil (USA) bt Anne Kremer (Lux) 6-1 6-7 (6-8) 6-3

Lina Stanciute (Ltu) bt Naomi Cavaday (Gbr) 1-6 6-4 6-1

Andrea Hlavackova (Cze) bt Heather Watson (Gbr) 6-3 6-3

Anna Smith (Gbr) bt Mona Barthel (Ger) 6-1 6-2,


Original post with results did say unconfirmed.

It will be interesting to see how much closer Anna gets to Hlavackova than Heather and interesting to see that the Americans have handed Heather a wild card for next week.

So will Anna get a SE for Stockholm now?