Week 19 - ITF ($50K) - Kurume, Japan - Grass

SMC1809 · All-time great

Week 19 - ITF ($50K) - Kurume, Japan - Grass

Peter too · Tennis legend

Q1: GEORGE, Nicola (GBR) 748 beat MIYAHARA, Mihoki (JPN) WC UNR 7-5 6-2

Q2: GEORGE, Nicola (GBR) 748 v OZEKI, Michika (JPN) UNR

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

Nicola starting to cut a swath through the Japanese qualy field, I see... wink

steven · Tennis legend

Emily on twitter after I suggested the Brits here were starting the grass season early:

"It's not grass!It was never expected to be!Its the same that these japanese tournaments are always on, astro with lots of sand :)"

Not sure then why ITF called it "carpet" last week and "grass" this week, but there you go - it seems to be suit Emily either way

SMC1809 · All-time great

ITF site still using last week's ranking.

R1: O'BRIEN, Katie (GBR) 6 WR 225 v FUJIWARA, Rika (JPN) WR 267

R1: WEBLEY-SMITH, Emily (GBR) WR 271 v AOYAMA, Shuko (JPN) WR 308

Katie beat Fujiwara in 3 sets in February, while EWS lost to her opponent in the doubles last week.

Doubles:

L16: LETCHER (AUS) / O'BRIEN (GBR) v HAMAMURA (JPN) / INOUE (JPN)

tony_orient · ATP qualifying

Pretty much perfect draw for Emily in her bid to make the top 250 for a Wimbledon WC - facing one of the lowest ranked opponents in R1 and only the 7th seed in R2

Peter too · Tennis legend

Q2: GEORGE, Nicola (GBR) 748 lost to OZEKI, Michika (JPN) UNR 6-0 4-6 4-6

steven · Tennis legend

If I have deciphered the 6 am BST tweet at http://twitter.com/#!/itf_kurume correctly, Katie won her doubles match 7-6(6) 6-2 and Emily won hers 2 & 3. The doubles matches were due to be played indoors if it rained, so with those the only results reported, it looks like the singles matches have been rained out so far.

steven · Tennis legend

Again, it depends on me having deciphered the tweet correctly, but seeing as the doubles results were correct yesterday, I'll risk doing it again. Further rain delays here but both Brits are on court now:

- Katie 1 set all v Fujiwara 4-6 6-0
- Emily a set up v Aoyama 6-1 1-1

steven · Tennis legend

20 minutes ago:

Katie 4-6 6-0 3-2
Emily 6-1 2-5

Talk about 'coasters!

steven · Tennis legend

Fujiwara beat Katie 6-4 0-6 6-4

Emily into a 3rd set 6-1 4-6 2-1

PaulM · Tennis legend

Katie's h2h was too good to continue. Disappointing trip for her, was expecting more.

Smidster · Challenger level

Em's Score has been posted on Twitter but I am not sure if it is good or bad news

1-6 6-4 6-7 (6)

steven · Tennis legend

Emily won 6-1 4-6 7-6(6) and she'll be in the top 250 on Monday!

steven · Tennis legend

L32: (6) Katie O'Brien WR 221 lost to Rika Fujiwara (JPN) WR 289 (CH 89 in 2005) by 6-4 0-6 6-4 bleh
L32: Emily Webley-Smith WR 253 beat Shuko Aoyama (JPN) WR 311 by 6-1 4-6 7-6(6) smile

L16: Emily Webley-Smith WR 253 v Hsu Wen-Hsin (TPE) WR 266 (CH 221 in 2006)

All based again on possibly dodgy deciphering of Japanese tweets (though Kurume have confirmed Katie's result in English to someone from the UK who asked, so I'm reasonably confident as long as they themselves haven't got any set scores the wrong way round) and with a similar caveat, it looks like Hsu beat 7th seed Sacha Jones 6-0 in the 3rd today. Emily has already beating Hsu twice this year - once easily in Sydney 3 & 1 and then in 3 sets in Fukuoka last week 4-6 6-2 6-0.

-- Edited by steven on Thursday 12th of May 2011 09:17:48 AM