R1: Nicola Slater (GBR) & Diana Marcinkevica (LAT) 346 vs. Irina Buryachok (UKR) & Anna Tatisvili (GEO) 183 [4] Good luck Nik! I'd have said it was a good draw as Tatishvili has been in awful form, but she just made the doubles final last week in Budapest.
Serena is playing singles here interesting possible R2 encounter between her and junior RG & Wimbledon champ Bencic.
Nik's R1 is due up on stream imminently - in a concrete bowl.
For stat fans, apparently Serena has never won an International level event! Maybe that's why she's turned up here, to add it to the resumé (well, that and a no doubt sizable appearance cheque!).
Can anyone post a driect link to a stream feed please? For some reason when I click the links on live score hunter they aren't opening up on my browser.
Nik's weakest dubs performance I've seen this year (of 5).
Her partner didn't help - at all! And Tatishvili was pretty good - seems to have rediscovered something.
Hope to see Nik again soon though I think she can make a go of being a doubles specialist.
As expected, Serena wins the first International level title of her career.
Here in Sweden, a Swede (Johanna Larsson) unexpectedly made the final.
Over in Austria, in Bad Gastein, an Austrian very very unexpectedly won the title!
That's a nice story in itself, Yvonne Meusberger - who, at 29, has made WTA finals in each of the last two weeks (her first finals), and rocketed from 116 to 58 in the rankings as a result, overwriting her 2007 CH in the process!
On another point, there have been very, very weak qualifying fields this week, last week in Palermo & Budapest, and next week in Baku, and even the Premier in Stanford.
Through all those 6 events, only Joko gave qualifying a go at one of them. I can sort of understand the first two weeks I suppose, all on clay, and so institutionally argilliophobic are we as a tennis nation that we often dismiss the surface out of hand.
Still, the qualies were so under subscribed at each that any of our ladies down to at least Mandy Carreras would have got in, but none took the chance.
Tara for example played two $25K's instead; JoKo is playing a $25K instead of qualies at Stanford next week, or, even, the $50K in Lexington - where she did so well last year.
I often think players from other nations have better, or, cannier, scheduling than ours.
Which is not to say you always just look to exploit the weakest possible field - there's an obvious inherent danger in that thinking - but we don't seem to get to many of the events that offer good reward for risking them.
Sam & Jade in South Africa this year, and Tara in Kazan last, are the only real examples I can think of in recent times in the main part of the season.
interesting possible R2 encounter between her and junior RG & Wimbledon champ Bencic.
