That's a good solid win.

Doesn't get any easier in the next round.

Well done, Harriet. Good first match on the hardcourts. By the third set she seemed to be relaxing a bit, and letting the shots flow, without being too aggressive. Harrison on the other hand kept trying to hit the cover off the ball, and gave up too many unforced errors. Harriet seemed to be having a bit of a problem with the surface, a few times she looked like she might slip after hitting the shot. In the last game this did happen, but in a comedy moment Harrison put the ball out of court and promptly sat down too. The livestream went a bit wonky in the middle part of the match, and Cindy Shmerler's commentary was cut.

Dart vs Duval in play and on ITF live stream.

*3-3 after 4 successive breaks of serve.

Recovered from *1-4 to *3-4 in the second set, but then only won 2 more points.

The bookies had it pretty much 50/50, and Duval is clearly better than her current ranking and has obviously been much higher in the past before illness, but at the same time, if you look at who she has lost to in the past few weeks, Han, You, Arconada, all ranked lower than Harriet, you'd like to think your current 3rd best player could do the same.

I suppose it is her first tournament back after Wimbledon, bar that exho stuff, and she can get across to Vancouver earlier for one last tournament before US Open quals, but you'd have hoped for more from a 4th seed, especially with her draw opening up a bit with Ahn withdrawing.

Naomi has surged up and down the rankings several times over the years. She reached a CH of 185 in Feb 2011. By Mar 2013 she was back to 361. It was over a year later in May 2014 before she set another new high of 166 and improved that every month until she reached 138 in Oct 2014. By June 2015 she was back to 238. Around this time Fitzy joined her for her latest surge up the rankings to 76 in Mar 2016. She then stabilised around 180 for several months before Fitzy left and she started the long slide.

-- Edited by Peter too on Friday 9th of August 2019 03:34:30 PM

You don't get rankings based on aesthetics but wins and resulting ranking points.

Naomi got her serve in such consistently strong order plus the rest of her game held up enough thst she got these wins and points. Over the 12 month period that produced her CH ranking I think it was probably deserved at that point ( without going back over her draws over that whole year ) and I also do have memories of her losing to but living scorewise with some much higher ranked players.

Just such a pity this wasn't maintained for longer and that serve became relatively an inconsistent shambles. Without that firing she will always have big limitations on where she can get to.

Em and Junri lose a tight match tie-break on a netcord 4-6 6-4 8-10