Week 1 - ITF (W25) - Bendigo, Australia - Hard

Michael D · All-time great

RE: Week 1 - ITF (W25) - Bendigo, Australia - Hard

Ace Ventura · Tennis legend

Yep, tournament started promising, but ended up pretty grim. Battling initial wins for Sam and Katie B, but they were more than cancelled out by the retirement and walkover, hopefully both will be fine for Melbourne.

Katie S seemingly beat one of those bagel girls initially, and while the 3 sets (or 2 and a bit) against Bondar may end up being useful match practice thinking of the bigger picture, it is another match against a similarly ranked player she has lost (to go with the Harrison, Govortsova and Loeb defeats in America to end her 2019 season), a match where she was the 1/3 pre match favourite, even if Bondar gave Konta a scare in Bath 11 months ago.

Hopefully not a sign of things to come on the injury front. I suppose thinking more positively, Katie B is now technically on a 4 match winning streak having given W/Os in her last 2 tournaments.

Barefoot · Lower Club Player

Surely (hopefully!) some kind of bug if two Brits who probably will have been hanging out together have both withdrawn in quick succession...

If that's the case hopefully Sam will be better by this time next week.

Ace Ventura · Tennis legend

Barefoot wrote:
Surely (hopefully!) some kind of bug if two Brits who probably will have been hanging out together have both withdrawn in quick succession...

If that's the case hopefully Sam will be better by this time next week.

Hopefully, although Katie did give Naiktha the walkover in India a few weeks ago, so perhaps she just can't manage so many matches at this stage of her comeback? I'm not sure if she was meant to play next week, but she'll obviously have an extra week to recover than Sam for her first Melbourne match. Hopefully she'll be fine for that, if not just for the guaranteed financial windfall, although now she has competed, she should be eligible for the half prize money, if she did have to withdraw.

foobarbaz · Strong Club Player

I reckon we have to accept that the players know best when it comes to these withdrawals. Playing matches at the start of the season, it seems to me that injuries might be statistically more likely to happen. In Bendigo, our players got some match practise, and although Swan lost, her performance playing Bondar, was probably the most encouraging. In that match, after a shaky first service game, there wasn't much in it. Bondar's serve was very strong, for the first part of the first set, with something like 80% of first serves in when the score was 5-2 in games. Swan came back into it towards the end of that set, and perhaps might have been able to force a tiebreak with a bit of luck. The second set was evenly competed, but Swan won it. The match tiebreaker went to the more experienced player.

The players really don't need to be busting a gut, in the W25k when the Aussie Open is just around the corner. The same goes for Konta, in Adelaide, her first priority is being fit for the Slam's.

-- Edited by foobarbaz on Thursday 9th of January 2020 06:36:33 PM