Week 38 - WTA International ($500K) - Seoul, Korea - Hard

AliBlahBlah · All-time great

RE: Week 38 - WTA International ($500K) - Seoul, Korea - Hard

AliBlahBlah · All-time great

Heather serve has deserted her, and she's reaching a bit as Gibbs, with substantial help form Hev errors, breaks to serve for the set, 5-6*

AliBlahBlah · All-time great

Looked pretty good for the first 2/3 of the set, and then, just, disintegrated - FH and serve disappeared.
Gibbs didn't have to do much more than keep her level steady to mop up the spoils, 5-7

-- Edited by AliBlahBlah on Tuesday 16th of September 2014 05:26:51 AM

AliBlahBlah · All-time great

Gibbs also serving poorly, Heather's cross court FH almost hooking repeatedly wide, Gibbs hitting the 2 hand BH often back behind Hev to good effect, Hev going for return winners on most 2nd serves, and looking to get to net more, with some effect.
The result, on serve, 4-6 2-1*

AliBlahBlah · All-time great

Poor game from Heather, ended with a DF to conceed the break. Gibbs keeps chipping the serve back on the BH with heavy slice, and it's consistently causing Hev errors.
Needs something to shake herself out of this malaise right now, 4-6 2-3*

AliBlahBlah · All-time great

A poor FH, an awful missed easy volley put away in to the bottom of the net, a nice DTL Gibbs passing winner... a break for Gibbs, and this looks over.
But, Heathers done it before, not feeling confident though today. Veronelli called on to court.
4-6 2-5*

PaulM · Tennis legend

She was dreadful after *53. Like, really dreadful.

Poor performance and a poor result. She played a bit better than in New York but the way her game now completely disintegrates is a bit worrying.

Needs to be doing better in these events, with a couple of very strong tournaments coming up in China, a good run here would have set her up nicely and consolidated her top 50 spot. This time of year is a big opportunity for her, needs to make it count.

-- Edited by PaulM on Tuesday 16th of September 2014 05:56:31 AM

AliBlahBlah · All-time great

R1: WATSON, Heather (GBR) 8 46 lost to GIBBS, Nicole (USA) Q 101 5-7 2-6 bleh

Form fell off an absolute cliff as Paul said above, strange, and disappointing

-- Edited by AliBlahBlah on Tuesday 16th of September 2014 05:55:41 AM

murray_2k9 · Challenger qualifying

I feel like his sums up the year from a WTA perspective...weve had very little to cheer at the top level without Laura to keep us guessing....

Hopefully Heather was just having an off day and will bring it at the next event.

Helen40 · Grand Slam Champion

Gutted. When is Laura due back, it's like they need each other to drive themselves on.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Wonder where Heather is based now . . . is she going to use the NTC as a pay-per-go centre, as supposedly some are ? Which makes little sense to me - who do you hit with ? who do you train with ? You can't just turn up and spend all the time with your coach, as a lonesome twosome - it doesn't work like that.

Probably got nothing to do with it but I can't help wondering if Heather's awful showing in NY and maybe now here has something to do with it - it must be very de-stabilising to suddenly lose your home training base and, for her, I assume, not have any natural alternative.

Jan · Hall of fame

cry

indiana · Tennis legend

Great pity and a bit strange how Heather seems to have so dipped in form recently after such earlier excellence. I do hope she can find some solutions pretty quickly.

Does appear to have been a very winnable match on the day, as it should have been, and that a Heather playing closer to her best would have won it.

Ratty · County player

Male tennis players "go off" from time-to-time in their matches too; but they have the huge advantage of winning most of the points on their serve, so can generally hang in there in the hope that their mojo will return before it's too late. Murray v Haase would be a recent example.

Most women don't have big serves, and so a downwards blip in form would on the face of it be more likely to result in them losing the match.

No big deal, IMO.

tony_orient · ATP qualifying

I mentioned after her US Open defeat that I was worried that the effects of playing a lot of matches at the start of the year was starting to catch up with Heather. this result has done nothing to allay those fears.