Week 40- WTA Premier ($4.8M) - Beijing, China - Hard

SMC1809 · All-time great

RE: Week 40- WTA Premier ($4.8M) - Beijing, China - Hard

tony_orient · ATP qualifying

Double faults starting to creep in, making her service holds more of a struggle, but everything else going well including breaking Muguruza 4 straight times

NotAClue · Lower Club Player

Hev is in doubles.
WD R1: WATSON, Heather/MARTIC, Petra (GBR/CRO) LLAGOSTERA VIVES, Nuria /MIRZA, Sania (ESP/IND) [5]

tony_orient · ATP qualifying

5-1 - Laura's 'bogey' scoreline - can she close out a set 6-1 this time?

tony_orient · ATP qualifying

No, as it's now 5-2 :(

NotAClue · Lower Club Player

GSM 6-3 6-3
Nice efficient win for Laura that against a hot prospect whos has pushed higher ranked players harder on this surface recently.

tony_orient · ATP qualifying

Slightly slow start, and a bit of a wobbly finish - but Laura won 10 out of 11 games in between!

This wasn't a certain win for Laura, any time two talented teenagers play each other there has to be a fair amount of unpredictability about the result so this is a good win.

Julia Carrot · All-time great

Far too many double faults our Laura, but a win is a win

NotAClue · Lower Club Player

Qualifiers spots in MD are against:
Mona Barthel
Sara Errani
Marion Bartoli
Maria-Teresa Torro-Flor (WC)
Roberta Vinci
Kimiko Date-Krumm (WC)
Jie Zheng
Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova

Some tough prospects there, as you'd expect at a Premier M

When, not if , our girls qualify I suppose ideal draws would be:
Laura v Torro-Flor - having betaen her convincingly in Guangzhou
Heather v Date-Krumm - Kimiko not having won a match since May

I'd give them both a fair chance in all those matches, though Sara, Marion & Roberta especially would be against the odds.

philwrig · Hall of fame

Both through but not at their best.
Hev especially but local WCs can be tricky and she is only 18.
Laura's first serve not as effective as you'd like, maybe shoulder still not 100%, but returning excellent. She doesn't seem to like to lead 5-1, but always gets it done in the end which the main thing.

Hev should beat Giorgi but she needs to be solid and Laura should beat Larsson but will probably need to serve a touch better.

Julia Carrot · All-time great

Peter too wrote:
Q1: ROBSON, Laura (GBR) 4 57 beat MUGURUZA, Garbine (ESP) 106 6-3 6-3
Q1: WATSON, Heather (GBR) 12 78 beat TIAN, Ran (CHN) WC 561 7-5 6-2

Q2: ROBSON, Laura (GBR) 4 57 v GIORGI, Camila (ITA) 95
Q2: WATSON, Heather (GBR) 12 78 v LARSSON, Johanna (SWE) 15 84

Heather beat Larsson in three last year.

But I think it's Laura that has to beat her this year according to the draw I'm looking at ?

Julia Carrot · All-time great

Tournament website 'News' confirms Camilla Giorgi will play Heather Watson. So it appears not to have changed.

SMC1809 · All-time great

The draw I'm looking at still shows Heather v Giorgi.

tony_orient · ATP qualifying

OOP out for tomorrow:

Heather first on Moon Court at 4am BST, followed by Laura on the same court next match up.

kundalini · Specialist Reporter + Intermediate Club Player

Julia Carrot wrote:
Far too many double faults our Laura, but a win is a win

The df rate across all the qualifying matches was about 20% of 2nd serves attempted. There were a fair number of players with a reputation for struggling with dfs but even those like Heather who tend not to df too often were finding it difficult. I suspected it might be windy so I checked the weather for Beijing and it confirmed my suspicion.