The TD hasn't been kind to Gabia here. Not only do they unusually start the MD on Wednesday, they then put Gabia on at NB 3pm. Should she lose, she won't be able to fly back to Raleigh and then go on to Chapel Hill in time for her scheduled 3pm college match tomorrow for a chance to qualify for the NCAA Doubles Championship. It's a 5hr+ flight back to Raleigh and Nebraska is an hour behind North Carolina. I'm a little surprised she didn't withdraw from here as all our other college players who are playing this week's NCAA qualifying tournaments did. Hopefully it's all good with her college coaches and doubles partner though. She'll just have to make it academic and win.
It will be interesting to see how she gets on against the Stanford graduate student after some promising results so far in her fledgling college career. There's a chance these 2 could meet in a college match in the spring now Stanford have joined the conference NC State are in, although I suspect India will play a slightly higher position in Stanford's team than Gabia will play for NC State.
Gabia definitely won't be making her college match now. A 15 minute opening game and 26 minutes to the first sit down I thought we were going to be here all night. Not many winners in this one. It was mostly a case of lengthy rallies, trading shots down the middle waiting for who was to error first.
I dipped in and out of this. There's no questioning the effort she puts in, fighting right to the end but her lack of experience at this level showed a bit, particularly at the beginning with her being frequently wrong footed by DJ's shots not going where she expected them to go. But that'll come with the help of her college coaches and she's got a good base from which to build from.
Re previous post, just to mention, 14 year old Kristina liutova has qualified and made the QFs here
She's the young very talented Russian girl who's been stuck in the USA for the past 2 years, not able to travel and play outside the USA or else she'll lose her visa application which has been bogged down in problems all this time
