Week 9 - WTA International ($227K) - Acapulco, Mexico Hard

PaulM · Tennis legend

Week 9 - WTA International ($227K) - Acapulco, Mexico Hard

PaulM · Tennis legend

Makes a bit of a mess but fights through a tough game to hold

3-1*

PaulM · Tennis legend

Wins 75 63.

Lots of long tight games. Pretty glad she didn't need to serve it out but job done.

Can play better, will need to. But she did well to keep herself together today and do enough to get over the line.

wolf · Tennis legend

Heather won 7-5 6-3 to set up a meeting with Mladenovic who beat Lepchenko 6-2 6-3.

Peter too · Tennis legend

R1: WATSON, Heather (GBR) 73 def MATTEK-SANDS, Bethanie (USA) 164 7-5 6-3

R2: WATSON, Heather (GBR) 73 v MLADENOVIC, Kristina (FRA) 2 30 CH=27 2015
H2H 2-3
Barnstaple 2009 6-2 4-6 2-6
Australian Open 2011 6-3 6-2
Nantes 2011 7-6(3) 6-2
Saint Gaudens 2012 2-6 1-6
Baku 2014 2-6 6-3 0-6

vohor · Grand Slam Champion

Good that Heather got the win albeit, by the sounds of it, not firing on all cylinders; hopefully she can find her A game in R2; good luck Heather :)

Jan · Hall of fame

Ooh sounds like a nervy watch!
But she got the "W". Well done Hev

wolf · Tennis legend

Jan wrote:
Ooh sounds like a nervy watch!
But she got the "W". Well done Hev

With apologies, PaulM always makes it sound like a nervy match. wink smile evileye

AliBlahBlah · All-time great

wolf wrote:
Jan wrote:
Ooh sounds like a nervy watch!
But she got the "W". Well done Hev
With apologies, PaulM always makes it sound like a nervy match.

Jan · Hall of fame

wolf wrote:
Jan wrote:
Ooh sounds like a nervy watch!
But she got the "W". Well done Hev
With apologies, PaulM always makes it sound like a nervy match.

ah ok biggrin

PaulM · Tennis legend

AliBlahBlah wrote:
wolf wrote:
Jan wrote:
Ooh sounds like a nervy watch!
But she got the "W". Well done Hev
With apologies, PaulM always makes it sound like a nervy match.

Haha, this one it was. Seriously, that game at *5-4 40-0 in the first set man. Total riot. But it was very much the usual pattern, played very nicely and aggressively until it got to the sharp end, then got tight and it became a scrap. We've seen it plenty times with Heather over the past couple of years so I'm sure you could all picture it.

10 double faults is out of character, but she was actually going quite big on the second serve a lot which contributed to a lot of them.

vohor · Grand Slam Champion

It's a shame such self doubts have crept into Heather's game because early in her pro career the "sharp end" of a match and, indeed, a tournament always seemed to bring the very best out of her...hope she can re-discover that magic formula; I'm sure it's still in there somewhere :)

Jaffa · Challenger level

Completely agree with Paul M on this one. It was a truly terrible end to the first set. She did very well not to crumble to be fair and should gain plenty of confidence from that result.

tony_orient · ATP qualifying

Good win for Heather, maybe a bit scrappy but after Fed Cup she is on a decent winning run so should be feeling more confident.

Heather won 15/36 second serve points, which equated to 42%, pretty close to what you would expect. Therefore, if she is tactically serving bigger and accepting more double faults, then based off a sample size of one match it looks like the gain from the bigger serve and the loss from more doubles roughly cancel each other out.

AliBlahBlah · All-time great

Heather is 6-1 in her matches this year, 85.71%, a higher % than any other Brit.
Her schedules noticably lighter to date than most other years by this point, where this week would be her 4th or 5th outing.
Hopefully saving efforts to target events later specifically for maximum return. Only worry is, at the ranking she is now, she will be on the borderline for entry, and even qualies for entry, to those events, so she might get left in between.

Kiki Mlad has played some very strong, assertive tennis so far this year. I'm only hoping that she's a bit tired, this being her 6th event, and 14th match, already.