I'm afraid the standard of play is horrific. Harriet fluctuates between timid, passive shots down the middle that regularly land too short and wild, aggressive shots, especially forehands, that miss the court by a huge margin.

I missed Harriet breaking to love at the start of the 3rd set. I shall imagine for a moment that it was four stunning winners but I suspect it probably wasn't *1-0

KN f ue long 15-0, then a return winner 15-15, two poor backhand errors from Harriet 15-40, then an almost comical slow 2nd serve dumped in the net by KN, who comes up with a backhand drive volley winner for the break 1-1

Errors from Nara 0-30, Harriet in total control plays a bizarre nothing forehand (imagine trying to rally against an 8 year old) that sets-up KN backhand pass winner for 30-30, D b dtl ue error well wide, N f error, unret, awful Dart f ue long 1-2

Harriet broken from 40-0, KN again unable to return the snail paced Dart 2nd serve, losing 5 points in a row with KN only contributing one decent point among them, four HD forehand ues 1-3*

Yet more errors from Dart, up 15-30 after landing an aggressive backhand dtl, wasted it with terrible play, two HD errors and one KN b winner in the next 3 points 1-4

Harriet finally gets her act together 40-0, including a super backhand pass winner, two more HD errors, both backhands down the line that landed miles wide 40-30, then an unret 1st 2-4

Nara careless 0-30, then competent 30-30, Harriet poor 40-30, KN error for 40-40, a decent sliced backhand from Dart that KN couldn't deal with, creates the chance to break, then an aggressive backhand cc from HD forces an error from KN, for the break *3-4

Dart broken to love, 2 HD errors and two 2nd serves punished, one immediately, one after a rally 3-5

Harriet punishes a 2nd serve, then an aggressive b cc for 0-30, unret 1st, a super b winner from KN 30-30, awful return error from Harriet, can't remember the final point 3-6

Hard to describe just how awful that final set was. KN was the more aggressive player, tried to construct the points despite possessing modest weapons, and played a few decent shots. Basically Harriet gifted her the match with a frightening error count.

I can only hope Harriet was a lot better in the first set. I hate to think what the 2nd set was like. Perhaps it was just a terrible match-up, making both players look far worse than they would do against your standard opponent ranked 101-199.

The stats show that over the course of the whole match Harriet landed 47% of her first serves, winning 49% and astonishingly, 45% behind her 2nd serve. 1 ace and 2 dfs. 

 

-- Edited by kundalini on Tuesday 8th of October 2019 08:07:43 AM

Thanks kundalini, that sounds pretty ugly unfortunately

R32: Harriet DART (GBR) 133 lost to Kurumi NARA (JPN) [Q] 159 (CH:32 Aug 14) 6-3 1-6 3-6  
R32: Heather WATSON (GBR) 125 def Kateryna BONDARENKO (UKR) UNR (CH:29 Oct 09) 6-4 7-6(3)

 

Great report, you sound as though you had a thoroughly enjoyable hour or so watching that set of tennis, kundalini

Oh dear, anyone know if she has found a new coach yet. As for points I think she has covered over 70% of her points for this quarter so thats not too big an issue and changing coach now is probably the best time to prepare for next year.

She does have 183 of her 493 points coming off by the end of the Aussie Open, which could see her temporarily heading towards the 200 mark, if they weren't sufficiently replaced. She is down for the W100 in China next week, but I wonder if she plans to play much after that? Ending the season in late October then working on a few things in the off season, ideally with a new coach, sounds like a good option, but if she did have another early exit next week and ended her season, there will be a bit of pressure to do well in the early Aussie events if she doesn't want that potential ranking fall - she did have a couple of months off after that Sharapova match, so would have nothing to defend for a while, and a chance to climb back, but it would affect her tournament choices in March/April if she was circa 175 as opposed to 125.

Alternatively, she could of course do well next week and then this passage will be redundant.

Missed chance for Harriet there at this level.

Good to see Hev get a MD WTA win. Tough one next.

They lost 10-2