1. Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova v Vera Zvonareva (Miami, R1) The last time that Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Vera Zvonareva played each other on the WTA tour was in the last 16 of Roland Garros in 2011 where Pavlyuchenkova prevailed in a tight three setter to reach her first Grand Slam quarter-final. Since then, both players have had…
The second and final round of qualifying in Indian Wells is underway for the women with the main draw beginning on Wednesday. There are many great follows on Twitter if you want to see pictures of your favourite players and know who they are practising with… @StephintheUS and @lawanda50 are must follows this week. This…
I’m enjoying this quieter week and being able to preview players who don’t often get a look in on Moo’s Tennis Blog. I’ve missed the boat to write previews for Wednesday’s matches in Monterrey and none of the matches for Thursday in Kuala Lumpur look particularly inviting… therefore, i’ve decided to get ahead of the…
No more seeds fell in the bottom half of the women’s draw on day 3 (Halep v Gajdosova still to play at time of writing) after a cull of the seeds on the first day of the 2015 Australian Open. This nearly wasn’t the case for Maria Sharapova who saved two match points to beat Alexandra…
Daniela Hantuchova kicked off the defence of her Birmingham title with a commanding 6-1 6-4 victory over Belinda Bencic. For a set and a half, Hantuchova delivered a clinic of grass-court tennis. Solid serving, thumping returns, of which she must have hit well into double figures, and consistent aggressive play from the back of the…
The main draws in Birmingham, Queens and Halle all kicked off today. My first round predictions for Birmingham are following a similar trend to 2013. Looking at my full draw predictions, i’ve never seen such a solid cluster of red. There were a number of surprising results; one of the more eye popping was Victoria…
Paris is underway with no surprises although Alize Cornet did give us another oscar winning performance. I am 8/8 for Paris predictions so far. Pattaya City is a different story as the top two seeds, Sabine Lisicki and Svetlana Kuznetsova both withdrew from the tournament leaving just six second round matches to be played. Another…
Perhaps slightly left-field but this quarter-final between Daniela Hantuchova and Francesca Schiavone at Birmingham was one of my favourite matches of the year. At an International event, I don’t think it got a great deal of coverage and if you didn’t watch it, you probably wouldn’t have thought much of it. This was a terrific…
Andy Murray v Marin Cilic (Queens, Final) Marin Cilic Queens had a rather calamitous day today as rain forced the first semi-final between Lleyton Hewitt and Marin Cilic (which had briefly begun on Centre) onto the No.1 court as Andy Murray and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga played on Centre. Both went to three sets, but it was…
Queens was able to catch up today and completed all their third round matches with the big seeds all coming through. My original draws have been truly shocking this week and I am hoping to do a bit better for Eastbourne next week. Birmingham had some rain, but managed to get all their 3rd rounds…
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