Jos/Heather win 7-5 6-4

Great win

Contrasting fortunes for Laura & Hev!   Excellent win for Hev & Jos.   "Lertch" & Savinykh next for them & for Sarah & Mel the top seeds, RKJ & Abigail Spears.  Sarah should know a thing or two about the former...

Was there all day again today, some great stuff and some not-so-great stuff!

Watched the first set of MLDB-Murray, which was not great tennis; Sam was not looking comfortable and Michelle (who is in fact no louder than Katie) was not having to do a great deal. Sam has a lovely backhand (both slice & flat double), but her forehand often sounds mis-hit and can be too loopy to have effect; but she works angles very well and when she got MLDB moving laterally she made some good chances.

I then moved over to Stephens-EWS where I was pleasantly surprised to find the score at 5-5 in the first. But while the scoreline suggests a rather exciting match, it was pretty poor tennis. It was the first time I'd seen Em, and she has a great serve, one of our best I would say; she did not work points well today though, and was going for a bit too much sometimes. There were barely any rallies >5 shots so it was hard to really judge her; both players made an awful lot of errors and it was just not very good stuff. Stephens is a poor mover and didn't seem happy - but I saw a bit of her doubles later and she was hitting great and looked a good volleyer. Not a lot of serve-volley from EWS either which was a shame as I think when she did do it it was quite successful. She also had a silly altercation with the umpire over a call - the number of players who can't see a large white chalk puff is alarming! ;p

Only caught the end of Heth so don't really feel able to comment. Anne-Naomi I watched all of; Anne just had to grit her teeth and get it done, again it wasn't pretty. Naomi certainly played a lot better than when I saw her this time last year, and she can change direction brilliantly at times, but I do feel maybe her groundstrokes are a bit loopy and can just sit up at times. Her first serve % was atrocious today, as she herself muttered, and that probably cost her dear. She tries to do both big & down the T/wide, when maybe just big and in the box would suffice! Anne was not at her best by any stretch of the imagination, but she got it done (have to say I was rooting for Anne!). She does seem to let line calls/ball boys etc upset her tho - tho that said, there were lots of atrocious calls in this match (why no baseline judges on centre, and why are they still putting 6 y/olds as ballboys on centre too?? Crazy).

Katie made my day :) I know lots of people think Katie lacks certain skills, but I think she's awesome! The sheer intensity with which she hits the ball is so impressive - whereas Mel or Anne hit a really hard ball every now and then, every single ball Katie hits she absolutely pummels, on either side (the odd slice backhand notwithstanding). Sometimes she must've managed 12 or more full-intensity hits within a foot of the baseline in a row - I'm not sure many other of our girls can do that in matchplay. It's easy to see why she can struggle though: while Voegele had no match for the power, she was just slicing everything back - sometimes Katie could move her around enough for a backhand DTL winner, but not often - Katie does seem to struggle when the short ball finally comes and she has to step out of her comfort zone of baseline hitting and actually put the ball away. She had Voegele absolutely pinned back, yet only once of twice did she think of a drop shot, and she never really worked any acute angles. But still, I have huge admiration for the level of intensity she manages to maintain.

Katie's serve was on great form today too - very very high 1st serve percentage, almost all hitting the service line too. It broke down slightly towards the end: at 5-6, she served 2 consecutive DFs (I think she only did 4 overall, and 3 aces), then went down 15-40 (at which point she hammered the floor with her racket, reasonably enough), but pulled it back for a TB. All in all, a great match for her, was really pleased.

I then watched a bit of Dan Evans, who was fine but then annoyed me by calling himself a 'f*ggot' when he netted a shot. Not acceptable, in my book (or at least as bad as eating pizza). His gaggle of 4 or so coaches didn't seem to mind though. He also got a code violation for ball abuse; there were 5 balls for some reason and the umpire asked the ball kid to get rid of one. Dan was grumpy cos he was losing, so he said 'I'll do it', took one of the balls off this tiny kid, and hit it out of the stadium into the car park. Bit childish, imho.

Thanks for the report - what you say about Katie matches what I remember from Wimbledon last year, except that it sounds like her serving was as good as it's ever been yesterday!

-- Edited by steven on Wednesday 1st of June 2011 09:40:37 AM

Anne's not doing so well.... 1-6 0-1*

has heather and joss' dubs match started?