Week 8 - WTA Premier ($2M) Dubai, UAE - Hard

steven · Tennis legend

Week 8 - WTA Premier ($2M) Dubai, UAE - Hard

blob · All-time great

A good draw for this level, but Putintseva is very dangerous. Analogous to Laura a year ago, and almost exactly a year younger, Yulia is probably at least as talented as Laura - I have her in the Vekic/Barty league.

The score in AO juniors was 6-2 3-6 6-2 to Laura - I've found the ITF site works if you avoid the homepage (So, I went direct to http://beta.itftennis.com/procircuit/players/player-search.aspx without problem)

-- Edited by blob on Saturday 16th of February 2013 11:13:59 AM

Julia Carrot · All-time great

They both trained at the same Academy in Paris for a while. I remember Laura's Dutch coach commenting that she (Laura) knew what to expect behaviour wise. She certainly is unlikely to be as put off as other some other players.

-- Edited by Julia Carrot on Saturday 16th of February 2013 07:20:16 PM

korriban · Challenger level

Yulia is a massive fighter. And at 5 ft 1, she has to make up for lack of height with aggression and battling skills. However, she is also building quite a reputation for gamesmanship, verbal abuse (towards officials and even opponents) both on and off the court, brattishness and bad behaviour. At the very least, expect her to celebrate wildly after every point she wins as the match progresses, including errors from her opponent, even DFs!! She has been reported a number of times for this behaviour, and reportedly destroyed her runners up trophy at one of the junior slams in a moment of rage! This is gradually getting better, to be fair, but look out for one feisty competitor when Laura plays her. I hope Laura can cope with this, because a few opponents (Caroline Garcia for example) were clearly upset by these antics, and just couldnt concentrate properly - and the more this was clear, the more Yulia screamed and shouted! It wont be dull anyway, cant wait!!!!!!

philwrig · Hall of fame

By far the best draw given the field, and a good matchup as well , just need Laura to find some form and then I'd be very confident, play like she did last week this would then be 50/50.

tony_orient · ATP qualifying

Best possible draw for Laura given the very high quality of the field (I thought this was a premier 5 event based on who was playing). Most of the qualifiers will be ranked higher than Putintseva.

Hopefully Laura will have benefited from a week of training because she looked off the pace last week, and having got a nice draw she needs to take advantage.

I'm glad that Laura doesn't have a match against Radwanska lined up in April, but would be good to see how she gets on against her here (although if she plays like last week against Radwanska it could be painful viewing)

RBBOT · Futures qualifying

Laura's had first hand experience of her antics in the junior AO a few years back.

philwrig · Hall of fame

Around about 4.30 tomorrow afternoon Laura's match will start, it's on Eurosport and other internet livestreams.

tony_orient · ATP qualifying

Pleasantly surprised to see Laura scheduled for last the match on the main court.

korriban · Challenger level

Laura is far and away the better player, almost embarrassingly so, but she could lose this, just as easily as win it......it's ALL on her racquet (or more in her mind). So hit and miss.....but when she's good, boy she's good.

Can everyone please be nice to Yulia...she's making a special effort NOT to be obnoxious, so the least we can do is not poke fun at her......and it might jinx the result too!

Robson 2-3*. Same old story. I find this really hard to watch.....Putintseva is a good battler, but the majority of points are either Robson winners or (mostly) UEs

2-4, having been 0-40 then making 3 huge UEs

-- Edited by korriban on Monday 18th of February 2013 06:37:22 PM

-- Edited by korriban on Monday 18th of February 2013 06:56:19 PM

-- Edited by korriban on Monday 18th of February 2013 07:09:52 PM

korriban · Challenger level

And the last 2 points of the match were........2 Robson UEs, the last a wild forehand return attempted winner, instead of getting the ball in play.....

Everything she had learned, around the time of the US Open and shortly thereafter, she seems to have un-learned - she COULD be a much much better player that Yulia will ever be, but will it ever happen.....?

Speechless

Ouch!!

-- Edited by korriban on Monday 18th of February 2013 07:40:54 PM

korriban · Challenger level

Apparently when Elena Dementieva retired, whilst everyone else on the tour was very complimentary, particularly the Russians, a young 16 year old Yulia took it upon herself to go on twitter/facebook (I forget which) and suggest that she was a (add your own choice of swearword here!), hated by almost everyone, and wouldn't be missed!!!! Classy!

How to win friends on the pro tour when still a junior!

As I said, I believe she has done quite a bit of growing up since then, but you still wouldn't want her to be calling the lines in a friendly match at your local club! I really do want Laura to win handily, if only to see how Yulia reacts! Must be some comedy value here, surely.

PaulM · Tennis legend

murray_2k9 wrote:
PaulM wrote:
Laura was dreadful, again. Marginally better than last week but not by much.

Performing on the big stage in the Slams is pointless if you can't back it up in the bread and butter events. She needs to iron out these silly kinks which are holding her back from going from being good to amazing. That last return summed it all up, a panicky slap in desperation of a winner landing miles off target.

It is all there, and in the droids she calmed down and executed some tactics she was dominating, but them she regressed to hit and hope, and ended up with a very poor defeat.
I totally disagree, its the opposite. You ultimately want to win the big matches in front of the big crowds that generate the most publicity. Winning WTA title after title and losing R1 and 2 of slams would be far worse

Thats fine if you are Serena. Not when you are 19 and trying to establish yourself in the game. She needs to be performing consistently. The worst thing that can happen at this stage in her career is to have two or three huge points scores making up a big part of her ranking, because if she can't perform well throughout the year, or picks up a niggle at the wrong time, its very easy to fall all the way back down again. Like Babos.

yes, she wants and should peak at big events, but to move up and establish herself as the real deal she needs to be winning week in week out. When she's reaching quarters, semis, finals and winning slams we can't stop caring about Premiers, but not when she is ranked outside the top 40 and has set a target of a WTA Title and a top 30 ranking.

hev is higher ranked because she is more consistent and has spread her points over the year. She is not as reliant on one part of the season. IMO Laura will be the more successful, because she can beat the bigger players, but sooner or later she needs to be regularly making the latter stages of tour events and taking out players ranked in the 70-110 range with much less hassle so her season is more rounded.

-- Edited by PaulM on Monday 18th of February 2013 08:35:14 PM

paulisi · Tennis legend

Let's hope for a second day of Kazhak bashing - go Robbo...

tony_orient · ATP qualifying

Looking forward to watching Laura today as it's the first match with a British player on Eurosport since I got Sky HD installed.

I'm hoping the match before Laura's goes on a bit so I can watch her live rather than on a delay. There is a speed gun on the court so worth having a look at Laura's serve speeds today.