Week 33 - WTA Premier 5 ($2.8M) - Cincinnati, USA Hard

Ace Ventura · Tennis legend

Week 33 - WTA Premier 5 ($2.8M) - Cincinnati, USA Hard

Ace Ventura · Tennis legend

Saves 2 MPs from *15-40 and now has a game point *A-40, but definitely feels like its just delaying the inevitable.

Back to deuce.

Ace Ventura · Tennis legend

Good hold, saving 3 MPs and now it's up to Sabalenka to try and serve it out 4-5*

Peter too · Tennis legend

R1: KONTA, Johanna (GBR) 39 lost to SABALENKA, Aryna (BLR) 34 6-4 3-6 4-6

Strongbow · All-time great

Drat! cry

Ace Ventura · Tennis legend

Sabalenka wins 4-6 6-3 6-4 in 2 hours 25 mins.

Big turnaround from 6-3 3-1 and I wouldn't really say Sabalenka played particularly well that final set and a half, just a lot more errors from Jo and too many DFs - at least 10. Think she is due to play in New Haven next week, but this was definitely a step backwards.

nicofrance · Strong Club Player

A poor match which Konta should have won but she decided to donate the second set to Sabalenka and the writing was on the wall after that.

Her serve fell to pieces at 3-2 in the second set and was poor for the rest of the match . Hard to know what youre going to get from Konta each match with a lack of consistency .

Sabalenka still looks like a rough diamond but has a very powerful game . Konta has had some better results in recent weeks but she now wont be seeded for the US Open . She needs a bit more variety in her game as theres only one plan , shes not consistently good enough to continue with this high risk game and needs to mix things up .

AliBlahBlah · All-time great

Served very very badly, returned very badly.
I guess on the up side, Jo playing really quite poorly still took WR34 to 6-4 in the third over ~150 minutes.

The wait for everything to click again goes on, if it does, then people better watch out. Johanna is, by most reckonings having a mare of a season, and is still top 40 in the world.
How quickly we are spoiled that we take so lofty a position for granted.

I have no faith in Joyce, and I do wonder that Johanna's stubborn streak might have her stick with him just to try and prove that everyone else is wrong. I have seen nothing he has done that has changed her game in any way, good or bad, the same faults are still there, the same strengths. He's a non-entity, no impact.
Of course, the player knows better than the armchair likes of me though.
I'm just dejected. Because she is often playing so... randomly? Unrefinedly? You just can't keep on making those FH errors in those numbers, it gives away too many cheap points and neuters any pressure you build by letting the opponent off wuithout having to earn the escape.

That was one step back, let's hope New Haven & Flushing Meadows are the two steps forward that will follow on.

WAAAUUUUUUGGGHHHHH!

the addict · Tennis legend

Well on the plus side, Jo has only 22 points to defend from four losses for the whole of the remaing year - 20 of which are currently counters.

But live rankings show her dropping to WR46, which wouldn't have been DA into Cinci (41), or only just a top 8 seed in qualifying (47). So she needs to pick up some points quickly if she is going to achieve anything in the Asia swing.

And Joyce needs to earn his money too - his abilty to turn a first set win into a three set defeat is uncanny.

flamingowings · All-time great

Whilst I agree with the opinion that Joyce seems to be bringing little to the table (at least obviously) and hopeful that there is a coaching change in the off season, all the fault doesn't lie with Joyce. Some of it also lies with Jo. For all we know, Joyce has tried and is trying to add something to Jo's game but Jo herself is reverting back.

Jo's doubles partner, Ostapenko also lost in 3 sets - to Cornet - and the last set was a bagel, so maybe they can do some damage in the doubles draw.

RedSquirrel · Satellite level

the addict wrote:

Well on the plus side, Jo has only 22 points to defend from four losses for the whole of the remaing year - 20 of which are currently counters.

But live rankings show her dropping to WR46, which wouldn't have been DA into Cinci (41), or only just a top 8 seed in qualifying (47). So she needs to pick up some points quickly if she is going to achieve anything in the Asia swing.

And Joyce needs to earn his money too - his abilty to turn a first set win into a three set defeat is uncanny.

As a top 10 player Jo is guaranteed entry to the main draw of any WTA tournament she enters, subject to restrictions on Internationals, regardless of her ranking at the entry deadline.

PaulM · Tennis legend

The immediate issue is that this means she definitely won't be seeded at US Open

the addict · Tennis legend

I ws aware of that RedSquirrel, I was also thinking ahead to the Australian tournaments in January. Just using Cinci to compare, and didn't make myself at all clear !

Ace Ventura · Tennis legend

What's happened to Krunic? She won that Dutch pre-Wimbledon grass tournament, but has only won one match since - Hlaváková at Wimbledon and her last 3 matches have been:

Boulter L 2-6 0-6
Sevastova 1-6 0-6

and she has now just lost 1-6 0-6 vs Pavlychenkova

For a top 50 player to win literally 4 games in 3 matches is very alarming. Kind of does take the gloss off Katie's win a bit. Hope whatever it is, she gets sorted soon.

flamingowings · All-time great

I'm calling the partnership of Jo and Alona (Jelena) Kontapenko. It's catchy! smile