Week 25 - WTA250 - Birmingham, Great Britain Grass

PaulM · Tennis legend

Week 25 - WTA250 - Birmingham, Great Britain Grass

PaulM · Tennis legend

Couple of good games to level at *3-3

PaulM · Tennis legend

Broken to 30 and Potapova holds to move a game away.

*3-5

She could have done with being able to deploy the odd drop shot here. A couple of times Potapova has been pushed far back but Harriet hasn't had the power to follow up with a clean winner and the Russian has been able to turn the point around. She did it once finally in that game but was already 15-40* down.

PaulM · Tennis legend

Harriet loses 6-4 in the third. Saved two match points, one with a stunning return winner, the second a double fault. But she misses a return and Potapova takes her third chance.

Overall, a great performance with lots of very good, aggressive hitting. Enjoyed that match.

Neil Gee · Club Coach

A valiant effort from Harriet that would probably beaten most of the top 50 players on any given day - just not Anastasia Potapova, this was a bridge too far today.

Var · Pro player

PaulM wrote:
Harriet loses 6-4 in the third. Saved two match points, one with a stunning return winner, the second a double fault. But she misses a return and Potapova takes her third chance.

Overall, a great performance with lots of very good, aggressive hitting. Enjoyed that match.

Agree. Well done H!

hoots · Intermediate Club Player

The commentators kiss of death at 2-1 with a break to Harriet in the second set,"it's Darts to lose now"!!!

markymc1983 · Club Coach

Good to see Harriet coming into some good form the last few weeks. Good chance to improve her ranking over the next few weeks if she can get some decent draws

Peter too · Tennis legend

QF: DART, Harriet (GBR) 134 lost to POTAPOVA, Anastasia ( ) (4) 21 6-4 3-6 4-6

HarryGem · Club Coach

Very enjoyable day's tennis in Birmingham yesterday.
I watched the whole of this match and I have to say quality wise it was by far the lowest of the day. Harriet started like a train and was playing well, Potapova was on the other hand terrible though credit to Harriet for making her look this bad. I watched Potapova the other night against Kostyuk and this didn't look like the same player at all. There was no intensity her game was riddled with missed first serves and unforced errors.

As the match wore on the quality got worse and worse from both players. I think there were around or just over 20 double faults between the two of them.
There was indeed the occasional decent rally but hardly any was ended by a really great shot but more by an error.

Eventually the better player won but it was close and Harriet missed a great chance here as I'd say based on the two matches I saw of Potapova this week this was her playing at about 50% of her potential level. Her body language and overall demeanor made it look like she just didn't want to be on court. She was there for the taking but unfortunately Harriet was good enough to grasp the moment.

A decent effort from Harriet and at times perhaps the best she's played this year but a performance riddled with errors and some very poor serving at times. One of her second serves was clocked at 67MPH.

-- Edited by HarryGem on Saturday 24th of June 2023 09:24:55 AM

GAMEOVER · Satellite level

Unlike Nottingham where all the seeds lost early the final is between the top 2 seeds.