Katie Boulter's points from last week's final have not been added in time to boost her seeding here. Hence she faces the tough prospect of a 3rd round clash with second seed Katherine ip, who was a finalist in the first south-east Asian. Both she and winner Ellen Perez (against Katie) lost early last week, showing the difficulty Katie may have in following up last week's breakthrough performance. Isabelle Wallace is likely to face an Indian player, Rutuja Bhosale, WTA599 in her first match.
As expected Izzy plays Bhosale. The Indian girl's wins have been in weakish home tournaments, so may not be as strong as her WTA ranking implies. Katie's opponent is no pushover, if she hasn't recovered fully from last week's exploits.
R2
(9) Isabelle Wallace (GBR) v Rutuja Bhosale (IND) (13) Katie Boulter (GBR) v Cassandra Vazquez (MEX)
Local newspapers have indicated that Izzy lost along with another seed but don't mention Katie, which is hopefully a good sign that she has progressed to a third round match with Ip
R2
Rutuja Bhosale (IND) d. (9) Isabelle Wallace (GBR) 6-1 6-3 (13) Katie Boulter (GBR) v Cassandra Vazquez (MEX)
Impressive to back up a big effort last week, even if Bains helpfully removed Ip from her path. If Katie has more left in her tank then she appears to be in the better half of the draw, given Soylu (last week's winner), Xu and Tomic (fast rising '98s) plus Bhosale are in the top half
Potentially the 3rd seeded Serb in the semis who hasn't had a great time in this run of south-east Asian tournaments, with just the one win after the first two tournaments, although she was unlucky to draw eventually winner Perez (AUS) in week 1. At the rate Katie's going she must have a great chance to go reach another final, fingers crossed!
SF: (13) Katie Boulter (GBR) vs (3) Nina Stojanovic (SRB)
Winnable you'd think, Katie's on good form......
The other SF pits last week's tournament winner Ipek Soylu from Turkey against Bernie Tomic's little sister Sara.
I work a lot in Turkey, a sports mad country, and all I can say is that if this girl makes it big she will be rich beyond her wildest dreams, because sport and glamour are the 2 big things out there, and Ipek makes Laura Robson look like a plain Jane!