There are a couple of players i’ve really warmed to during this year but none more so than Timea Bacsinszky. Her personality, her story and most importantly, the way she plays tennis have all drawn me in like a moth to a flame. It’s been a tough few months for Timea as she has struggled for match…
1. Flavia Pennetta v Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova (Beijing, R1) The 2015 US Open champion, Flavia Pennetta (still can’t get over this) returned to action in Beijing where she has won her first two matches. In the first round, Pennetta overcame a game effort from the Chinese wildcard, Xinyun Han, 7-5 4-6 6-4. Pennetta also needed three…
The first batch of third round matches in Beijing will be played on Wednesday with the highlight being the night match between Caroline Wozniacki and Angelique Kerber. This will be the pair’s second match during the Asian Swing after Wozniacki scored her biggest win since May, beating Kerber, 6-2 2-6 6-3 in the quarter-finals of Tokyo. I…
Andrea Petkovic won her first match since the US Open although it wasn’t in the circumstances that she would have wished for. Eugenie Bouchard was forced to retire down 6-2 1-1 due to dizziness as the effects of her fall at the US Open still continue to be an issue. It’s a real shame for Genie and I…
Dominika Cibulkova scored a big win in the last match on Sunday, edging Jelena Jankovic in a close first round encounter, 6-1 1-6 6-3. After two almost identical sets, Cibulkova played a really positive and aggressive final set. As is often the case, the Slovak player benefitted from serving first in the decider. After exchanging…
Déjà vu strikes again in Beijing as Sara Errani and Caroline Garcia will meet for the second time in a week. The pair played out a gruelling match in Wuhan with Garcia eventually prevailing, 6-7(4) 6-4 6-2 in a first round clash that lasted two hours and 32 minutes. Garcia hit a whopping 80 winners…
Beijing draw carnage… the top two seeds, Simona Halep and Petra Kvitova, are both out of the final Premier Mandatory event of the season. Kvitova lost for the first ever time to Sara Errani in straight sets, 7-5 6-4. Kvitova was characteristically error-strewn and went 4 for 17 on break point conversions. Errani played a…
1. Dominika Cibulkova v Jelena Jankovic (Beijing, R1) The final match on the National Tennis Stadium in Beijing on Sunday will feature an all unseeded clash between Dominika Cibulkova and Jelena Jankovic. JJ leads the head-to-head, 3-1 although the pair haven’t played since 2009 when Jankovic won 6-1 6-1 on the clay courts of Stuttgart.…
I haven’t been covering Tashkent this week, the International event that has been running alongside Wuhan. Saturday’s final was an intriguing one on paper between Donna Vekic and Nao Hibino and I did get to watch some of it. Vekic has had a disappointing year up till now but still manages to have these…
Let’s rant… Overlapping tournaments seriously bug me. The fourth and final Premier Mandatory event in Beijing will begin on Saturday BEFORE the final of this week’s tournament in Wuhan takes place. Perhaps it’s my OCD but I find it frustrating that there aren’t clear definitions between weeks and it’s a pain for writing a preview…
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