Week 24 - WTA ($220K) - AEGON Classic, Birmingham - Grass

DavidC · Tennis legend

RE: Week 24 - WTA ($220K) - AEGON Classic, Birmingham - Grass

DavidC · Tennis legend

Heather serves an ace to take the tiebreak 7-5

Maza1987 · Challenger level

what did she do in the rain interval?
lol

DavidC · Tennis legend

wolf wrote:
Benesova should be fined for lack of effort against Tara, she wasn't even trying. Sorry if that takes something away from Tara, but it's the truth...

Anne punished the weak Paszek serve well, but her own serve went AWOL towards the end of the second set which is why it was so close.

Sam played well enough, she is a decent baseliner. Only breaks of the match were at 4-5 each set. Perhaps Sam could play a more agressive game style, she seems phyically strong enough?

Just caught the end of Mel and the start of Laura, both were serving well. The only break in the final set of Mel's match came when Mel at full stretch just got the return back, Lucic moved in for a drive volley and then decided to leave it and it landed on the baseline.

I forgot to take down the number of where Sally was sitting, I had my eye on someone I thought was Sally but looking at the picture above it clearly wasn't her. My fault but I only made a last minute decision to go today.

Thanks for the added colour. The commentators on Heather's match yesterday were saying that Benesova had claimed in her press conference that she was playing here only because her coach had wanted her to - sounds like a P45 in the offing.

DavidC · Tennis legend

Heather compounds Bally's misery by gaining an early second set break

7-6(5) 2*-1

DavidC · Tennis legend

A second break to create the mirror image of set 1

7-6(5) 4*-1

DavidC · Tennis legend

5*-2

Jan · Hall of fame

this is a huge turnaround by Hev

DavidC · Tennis legend

Heather doublefaults to give one break back

5-3*

DavidC · Tennis legend

Bally doublefaults to set up matchpoint - taken

GSM Hev 7-6(5) 6-3

DavidC · Tennis legend

Usually the 'old guard' have a psychological advantage for a while in these match-ups - perhaps an indication of a 'changing of the guard'

Jan · Hall of fame

Mixed feelings! Great for Hev, sad for Bally.

RBBOT · Futures qualifying

Maybe the new guard wants to stay ahead of the newer guard in the rankings!

murray_2k9 · Challenger qualifying

Excited to see how Heather handles Vinci, shes got a chance for sure.

In regards to the top 100, how is it looking for Hev?

Good scorelines from Tara and Mel IMO, and very respectable from Anne considering she was a wimbledon SFist. Feel dissapointed for Laura though.

PaulM · Tennis legend

I really think we are seeing the end of Bally. This year has been horrible but results like this will just crush her.

She drops out the top 100, could be GB #4 after Wimbledon, getting harder and harder to justify her as an Olympic wildcard. Do you really think she can psyche herself up for US Open qualies after all these years?

It's truly heartbreaking to see her putting in these kinds of results. She deserves so much better.

Well done to Hev though, but I think she was lucky the rain came when it did.