Heather loses  6 - 4   6 - 2

She seems though to have put in a reasonable performance and hopefully it was a great experience for her.

Pironkova has been WR 40 in 2008. Only last week in IW she beat WRs 110, 90 and 98 ( in two of these conceding less game than against Heather ) before losing to WR 27 Kleybanova in 3 sets in the last 64.

Heather has taken very significant steps forward this year and shows no signs just now of stepping back.

Hopefully she can now go away and consoidate further in a slightly less rarified atmosphere.

Also, I am afraid that I have just heard on Radio 5 Live that Anne's grandmother passed away yesterday.

She is quoted as saying " I tried to fight my emotions, but tennis just didn't seem very important today".

I think that is probably the main reason for her below par performance. None of us know how close she was to her grandmother or how sudden the death was but its pretty clear to me we should ignore this performance and hopefully she can regroup for her forthcoming tournaments.

As for Heather I'm a tad disappointed given that she didn't seem to be overawed by the occasion. She was semi competitive but I always felt from the middle of the first set on the other girl comfortably had her number. It is difficult to know what level her opponent was playing to as on the face of it her ranking appears too low for the recent performances she has put in. On a positive note we know Heather is a quick learner and a hard worker off the court so this experience will be nothing other than good. She now knows what level of play is required to be a winner at tour level so she can now work towards that. I think she is scheduled to play a bunch of clay court challenger events over the next two months which I think is a good plan. I'm not a big fan of British players avoiding the clay court tournaments at all cost because playing on clay ultimately improves your game and makes it more likely that you will be succesful back on a faster surface.

While it would have been great if Heather had won, I really do not see that anyone should be too disappointed.

Having not seen the match, it is difficult to really comment.  But it looks a reasonable display especially considering Pirinkova's wins last week. Even if Pirinkova is generally ranked true to her ability, that ranking is 117 !   I really do think you are looking for too much too soon, here, philwrig. She is developing well.  Indeed, I recall you yourself indicating that we might look for more later rather than earlier this season, once her studies are truelly behind her, though to be fair I am not sure how much time they any longer take.

As for Anne, I and others said our piece as to that defeat just on face value not being so worrying as you seemed to think in your short comment during it.  I agree though the news I later heard about her grandmother rather confuses any signs, so let's just see how Anne progresses in the coming months.

-- Edited by indiana on Wednesday 24th of March 2010 09:44:27 PM

Bally won the next four games to take a 6-2 2-0* lead, but the Czech girl has won the next three

6-2 2*-3

A second successive quick service game makes it 5-3*