Damn. Thought that would be close but thought that Lissey would have enough to win it.
Home advantage kicked in and Clemence won 6-7(7) 6-4 6-3 in 3 hrs and 2 mins.
And, CD, you're hopeless, a feeble display, one out of three
(do you think I could try and sneak the two good ones from yesterday in and make it 3 out of 5?)
Seriously, thrilled for Ella - that is certainly a very good win against a decent player. Such a shame that Alicia couldn't quite manage it - she was very close.
Now to see if either of the Brits end up against Maia.......
The Qs have been placed and while some on here won't like it, I personally think it's the best possible outcome. Maia has drawn Ella and Eden landed in the Q vs Q spot and plays 19 year old Ru****i ranked 699. That's a great chance for 2 of our players to make round 2.
The other Q options were:
Piter
Buyucakay (7) - former top 100 player
Georges (3) - been in the headlines recently and a bit of a volatile player
Zimmermann (5)
Paquet (6) - held her own as a WC at the recent FO
The other 3 were obviously Q vs Q and Maia.
I hope Maia makes R2 has she had a lot of points to defend in the coming months and Ella has done pretty well to make the main draw in the first place, beating a higher seed in Qs and if Maia does lose, then Ella will have another great win on her record.
Naturally, you'd like a chance for all 3 players to advance, but when it's a 25k and one is the 2nd lowest ranked direct entry and the other 2 are qualifiers, then it was pretty unlikely all 3 would win and if you wanted them to avoid Maia, then 4/7 were seeds and then there'd even be a chance that Eden and Ella could have drawn each other in the Q vs Q slot. It is a bit annoying when Brits draw each other especially if one was a seed and the other was a place or two off being seeded, but I'm fine with this situation. Imagine the following scenario:
Georges (3) vs Eden (Q) Paquet (6) vs Ella (Q) Maia vs Sugnaux (Q) - top Q seed who came through qualifying last week and made the QF so her current rank of 481 will be boosted further.
You'd be lucky if 1 came through with that, whereas here we are guaranteed 1 and on paper, it's about the best draw that Eden could have had (without drawing Ella).
-- Edited by Ace Ventura on Sunday 7th of October 2018 06:48:37 PM