Week 17 - ITF ($25K) - Chiasso, Switzerland Clay

Michael D · All-time great

Week 17 - ITF ($25K) - Chiasso, Switzerland Clay

AliBlahBlah · All-time great

Already a much better scoreline than her previous $25K final.
Come on Amanda, take it to the third!

DF · Tennis legend

Not a good start! 0-2

Michael D · All-time great

Well, not to be cry but a very good week for Mandy overall, at least in two weeks she will end up with a good net credit! smile

Michael D · All-time great

F: (Q) Amanda Carreras WR 385 lost to (5) Isabella Shinikova (BUL) WR 225 (= CH) 3-6 6-7(1)

AliBlahBlah · All-time great

today

for the week generally.

wimdledont · Challenger level

Very good week for Mandy, with 31 points a very welcome haul, which will keep her up in familiar rankings territory, at around 340.

The match stats over the week suggest to me that she could be working harder in practice to develop a more aggressive, riskier first serve; and using her current ultra-reliable first serve as a second. She certainly hardly seems to have won any free points on first serve, and today won less than 50% of first serve points.

Perhaps she is holding herself back to protect an old injury?

-- Edited by wimdledont on Sunday 1st of May 2016 12:50:24 PM

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Her first serve stats will also be a reflection of the different return prowess of her various opponents.

Michael D · All-time great

wimdledont wrote:
Very good week for Mandy, with 31 points a very welcome haul, which will keep her up in familiar rankings territory, at around 340.

The match stats over the week suggest to me that she could be working harder in practice to develop a more aggressive, riskier first serve; and using her current ultra-reliable first serve as a second. She certainly hardly seems to have won any free points on first serve, and today won less than 50% of first serve points.

Perhaps she is holding herself back to protect an old injury?

-- Edited by wimdledont on Sunday 1st of May 2016 12:50:24 PM

That's an interesting question, of why she doesn't, or perhaps more, what it would require? I watched a few of her matches streamed last year, and every one of her serves she rolled in with a heavy slice, so I guess to do anything different would require her to remodel her service action completely. That would carry a significant risk, even if she has an appropriate coach who could help her (I have no idea of how much of a coach she does have). So I guess for Mandy, would the risk be worth it? So far the answer has clearly been no, but despite this good week, it will likely require her to improve something in her game to become a regular in the 200s rather than 300s.

PockyTastic · Futures level

From the guy who was there all week:

"it rained all night in Chiasso, centre court were flooded, so they worked hard on C2 and C4 to try to play the final outdoor and they managed to start at 13:15 on C4.

Court was very tough though, at the start you could see both players struggling a bit with their shots and movements.

Amanda Carreras was more in trouble than Shinikova, cause, as she said, she didn't find a way to give the proper spin she wanted to her shots. The reason was of course that Shinikova suffers a lot spin balls and dead balls and Carreras couldnt apply the proper tactic. Shinikova found the rhythm a lot before Carreras and she went 5-1. Tha match started in that moment. Carreras decided to be more aggressive with her forehand, many times played inside-out to force Shinikova to play on BH, her weak side (a lot weaker...), and to play almost only with sliced BH, to kill the rhythm and give less pace to the ball. Shinikova started to suffer (and to freak out ), Carreras went 3-5 but then she played a really bad service game and lost first set.

Second set was definitely a really good set of tennis. Shinikova as usual aggressive, Carreras very consistent and more ready to run to the net, where Shinikova, I didnt undestand why, called her many times. I have to say Amanda was very unlucky in a couple of occasions: when she went 3*-2, she has chances to go to 4-2 and Shinikova in one point hit 3 consecutive lines and in other one close the point with a FH DTL that hit both side line and base line......

Than the tiebreak where Carreras made 4 mistakes in first 5 points and that's it

Shinikova
Serve: weak, with a lot less power than baseline shots, at least first serve as good speed, but it is too flat
FH: her best shot, she can hurt a lot opponent basically from every part of the court. Still it is too flat
BH: quite a disaster, she can hit a good BH only DTL and if opponent's ball has good pace - disaster on dead balls - she has a nice sliced one
net play: better than expected but nothing exceptional
movements: not bad considering how tall she is

Carreras
Serve: low speed, at least she can put on serve a lot of spin
FH: best shot, mostly cross court is very dangerous, she can hit it with heavy spin but also flat
BH: so and so, she has a very good sliced BH but the top one is too weak, she can't put the proper power to it and she never hits it DTL
net play: a bit like Shinikova, nice but not exceptional
movements: of course very very good"

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Brilliant, Pocky. Many thanks. And to the 'guy who was there all week'....

And the summary of Carreras' game sounds spot on (i.e. for what it's worth (!), I agree completely

)

Michael D · All-time great

Coup Droit wrote:
Brilliant, Pocky. Many thanks. And to the 'guy who was there all week'....

And the summary of Carreras' game sounds spot on (i.e. for what it's worth (!), I agree completely )

Yes, I'd like to echo those thanks too, Pocky, wonderful to get such a detailed account of the match and Mandy's game, much appreciated. It seemed the rain did affect her more unfortunately, and she would have had a much better chance if she could have played on CC in the same conditions as the earlier rounds.

PockyTastic · Futures level

No problem. I should have said I got all the info from Michele Galoppini who covered the event for spaziotennis.com (an Italian tennis website that has some articles in English). He posted links to his interviews on Tennisforum, including a couple with Amanda:

www.spaziotennis.com/2016/04/itf-chiasso-semifinals-post-match-interviews-with-carreras-ruse-and-grabher/

Mandy comes across as rather humble, and a likeable person. It's a shame the court conditions didn't allow her to bring her best performance in the final, but she still managed to challenge Shinikova more than anyone else this week, and has had some good wins as well including that career best over Rodina so all in all a positive week for Gibraltar's finest.

wimdledont · Challenger level

Thanks twice over Pocky.

Congratulations again to Mandy, for a CH win, a best-ever week, and emerging as the neutral's crowd favourite for sportswomanship.

wimdledont · Challenger level

Looking forward to the medium to long term, this could be a very well-timed win for Mandy, in that it will count towards her ranking at the cut-off for Roland Garros qualifying 2017.

She would need some 210 or so points - so 31 here leaves her needing about 180 more from 15 more tournaments - a dozen per tournament. So playing at 10k level, a "par" score would be the absolute maximum. But with some good further results at 25k+ ITFs, or in UK WTA qualies, with a wildcard, and she could do it.

Starting from a good place. Points accumulated towards RG 2017 qualification = Laura 40, Mandy 31, Heather 20, JoKo 10. Globally, she's probably in the top 100 of a Race to RG'17.