Week 19 - WTA Premier 5 ($2.1M) - Rome, Italy - Clay

philwrig · Hall of fame

Week 19 - WTA Premier 5 ($2.1M) - Rome, Italy - Clay

Peter too · Tennis legend

R3: KONTA, Johanna (GBR) 23 lost to DOI, Misaki (JPN) 45 6-4 5-7 2-6

kundalini · Specialist Reporter + Intermediate Club Player

Lost by 17 points overall. That's a big margin.

Julia Carrot · All-time great

Different girl today ........ oh well. Hope she's not too disappointed. We can live with the odd blip.

wimdledont · Challenger level

So not this week...

Doi wins 4-6, 7-5, 6-2

I thought she played very well, and was a very bad match up for Jo. Smal, quick nimble, lefty, who was completely unfased by Jo's generally excellent length of shot. The balls that had Vinci struggling to find something - anything - out of her bag of idiosyncracies just kept on coming back with interest.

vohor · Grand Slam Champion

Pity; credit Doi but that was a real chance for Jo to close in on the top 16. Hey ho :(

AliBlahBlah · All-time great

Can't expect everything at once. Jo scores her first WTA wins on clay, and secures one massive clay CH and then another, with a top 10 scalp on clay to boot.
That's enough for one week.
Hoped for more, but not at all disappointed that there wasn't any.
If she wins one round at Roland Garros, I'd count it as an excellent clay season.

Well done Jo

tony_orient · ATP qualifying

Jo proved, if proof were needed, that she can play very well on clay, even without winning today.

AliBlahBlah · All-time great

kundalini wrote:
Lost by 17 points overall. That's a big margin.

confuse 54.1% to 45.9%
It's a differential of 4.1%, more than easily accounted for by the score in the final set. Isn't it?

kundalini · Specialist Reporter + Intermediate Club Player

AliBlahBlah wrote:
kundalini wrote:
Lost by 17 points overall. That's a big margin.
54.1% to 45.9%
It's a differential of 4.1%, more than easily accounted for by the score in the final set. Isn't it?

Each game has to be won by a minimum of 2 points. Doi won 4 more games so you would expect, on average, for her to win the contest by 8 points (perhaps slightly higher, say 9 points given she has 4 extra games to increase her margin).

Had JoKo been winning those games she won, say to 15, or to love, while Doi typically held to 30 most of the time, then the winning margin could have been 4 or 5 points or even closer.

Set 1: JoKo won by 1 point

Set 2: Doi won by 8 points

Set 3: Doi won by 10 points

Today Bacsinszky beat Suarez Navarro 5-7 7-5 6-2. Winning margin 2 points. Kuznetsova beat Gavrilova 6-2 2-6 6-3 (one break). Winning margin 7 points.

-- Edited by kundalini on Thursday 12th of May 2016 03:48:16 PM

tony_orient · ATP qualifying

edit to remove repeating the post that was quicker than mine!

It's a game of small margins though, as 55% - 45% is usually a comfortable win and 67% to 33% sometimes enough for a 6-0 6-0 scoreline.

-- Edited by tony_orient on Thursday 12th of May 2016 03:44:00 PM

wimdledont · Challenger level

I find, to my surprise, that Jo has told the ITF that her favourite surface is clay...

www.itftennis.com/procircuit/players/player/profile.aspx

And after the last 2 Slams, anything short of astounding at Roland Garros would be a sub-par performance. I think the extra pressure may help her. Even today, she played the big points extraordinarily well, winning the set/match points by something around 8-2.

And she's played very well here, in all three matches.

Results elsewhere have gone Heather's way, with no other qualifier doing better than her, other than McHale, who doesn't count in the Olympics elimination race, because she's American...

McHale who was given a decent match by Laura, and nearly downed by Naomi, then gave Serena a damned good fright today.

All in all, a lot of reasons to be cheerful.

indiana · Tennis legend

Pity.

But the fact that Jo was a couple of wins from possibly being a top 16 seed at RG and she had to qualify there last year ( and wasn't that close to a direct entry ) says so much about her progress.

Relatively not too much to defend before Wimbledon with her Eastbourne points off the week after the seedings rankings ( defending 40 points from RG and 60 from Nottingham.

-- Edited by indiana on Thursday 12th of May 2016 05:55:32 PM

indiana · Tennis legend

Madison Keys is into the SF, thus overtaking Jo who will now be WR 22 in Monday's rankings, having overtaken Sharapova and Stosur this week.

-- Edited by indiana on Saturday 14th of May 2016 01:18:56 PM