Fed Cup 2014 - Europe/Africa Zone Group I

Jan · Hall of fame

RE: Fed Cup 2014 - Europe/Africa Zone Group I

steven · Tennis legend

Good hold - 6-1 5-7 6-5*

Jan · Hall of fame

looks like 6-6
I presume we have a tb?

yes we do!

-- Edited by Jan on Wednesday 5th of February 2014 10:14:01 PM

Jan · Hall of fame

lost track of the tb score

But Latvia have won cry

-- Edited by Jan on Wednesday 5th of February 2014 10:17:29 PM

-- Edited by Jan on Wednesday 5th of February 2014 10:19:17 PM

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

looks like we lost ?

PaulM · Tennis legend

Poor result in the end, lots of sloppy shots towards the end. Don't think it will make any difference though, I can't see a tiebreak scenario really playing out now.

Jan · Hall of fame

yes - pretty sure the final shot was Hev netting a volley

steven · Tennis legend

M1: Heather Watson WR 162 beat Jelena Ostapenko (LTA) WR 705 (CH 636 in Mar) by 5 & 1
M2: Johanna Konta WR 118 v Diana Marcinkevica (LAT) WR 216 (CH 215 last week) by 6-3 4-6 7-5
M3: Watson & Rae lost to Ostapenko & Marcinkevica (LAT) by 1-6 7-5 7-6(5)

GBR 2 LAT 1

-- Edited by steven on Wednesday 5th of February 2014 10:21:46 PM

PaulM · Tennis legend

Latvia looked much stronger than I was expecting. I think they can take a tie off Hungary at #2 and make the doubles interesting.

Well done to the girls for pulling through.

indiana · Tennis legend

Exciting stuff, and looks like plenty good fight during the day.

But the reality check is that we now need to beat Romania and, with that doubles loss, now almost certainly Hungary too. And looks like some performance step-ups will be needed to achieve that.

If we beat Romania and lose to Hungary, I expect both Romania and Hungary to beat Latvia and it would take some unlikely ( but not impossible ) winning margins for us to win out in a 3-way tie.

Always pretty difficult to guage from afar, and in my case just going on the scorelines and commentaries here ( thanks very much for these ), but I'm afraid that I don't have a great deal of optimism.( other than I am sure that we won't get relegated ! ).

Now girls, prove me wrong !! - err, not the regated bit.

steven · Tennis legend

Pool B after day 1

T=ties, M=matches, S=sets %, G=games %

1 ROU T:1 M:2 S:62.5% G: 64.7%
2 GBR T:1 M:2 S:62.5% G: 57.3%
3 LAT T:0 M:1 S:37.5% G: 42.7%
4 HUN T:0 M:1 S:37.5% G: 35.3%

M, S & G apply in order if and only if 3 teams are tied - realistically, we have to beat Romania to have any chance of topping the group and the tiebreaks would only become an issue if we beat them then lost to Hungary. If 2 teams end up tied (which seems even less likely), then the tie is broken simply by the result between the two teams concerned.

tony_orient · ATP qualifying

Ideally we would have liked to have beaten Latvia 3-0 today, but none of our girls were at their best and Latvia played well and deserved to win a rubber.

Heather struggled through her first set, losing her timing completely for a few games after going 4-1 up. She then eased through the second set as her young opponent started to struggle.

JoKo's match was an epic one to watch. JoKo defended brilliantly at times but missed to many easy shots at others. The Latvian girl was looking the better player in the third set but JoKo did really well to keep her head up and turn it around from match point down.

I missed the first set of the doubles which we won easily and from what I saw it wasn't a great performance from either Heather or Joss. Disappointing to lose from match point up, which doesn't often happen two matches in a row!

We will have to play a lot better to beat either Romania or Hungary, but credit to the Latvian team as both their girls put in a great effort considering their rankings.

The atmosphere today was actually pretty good. The Hungarians really got behind their players and with free tickets on Saturday we will be playing against a sizeable crowd.

indiana · Tennis legend

As I indicated, I do reckon though that we've probably ( though not mathematically ) burnt our bridges for winning a 3-way tie.

But hey, winning the tie was the most important thing today, and the likelihood was always that we would need to win all 3 ties to win the group.

PaulM · Tennis legend

indiana wrote:
As I indicated, I do reckon though that we've probably ( though not mathematically ) burnt our bridges for winning a 3-way tie.

But hey, winning the tie was the most important thing today, and the likelihood was always that we would need to win all 3 ties to win the group.

I agree. I can't really see us beating Romania but losing to Hungary though. And I think Hungary will lose a rubber to Latvia as well.

Spectator · All-time great

Yes, it's not a World Group tie; yes, we're unlikely to win (though I never rule out anything in Fed Cup or Davis Cup, and this is a team that could pull an upset); yes, it's not at home and it comes at the end of a period where most journalists have been away for over a month; etc etc. But the lack of coverage of this tie - I may be wrong, but it would appear that no major papers have sent a representative? - is not sending a great message about the relative importance of women's sports v men's. Especially given that the major players did turn up for DC long before we were in the WG.

Well done to the team, at any rate, and good luck to them for Friday.