In a pre-tournament interview, Julia Goerges remarked that she had “a good feeling” heading into the 2016 Dubai Duty Free Championships… the German player was pretty darn accurate as she produced a wonderful display in the first round to defeat the number eight seed, Svetlana Kuznetsova, 6-0 6-1 in 55 minutes. There have been a…
This post previews two of the first round matches from the Dubai Duty Free Championships main draw set to be played on Tuesday including Ana Ivanovic v Daria Gavrilova and Belinda Bencic v Jelena Jankovic. In case you missed it, you can read a preview of the full main draw for the 2016 Dubai Duty Free…
There are two WTA tournaments next week in Dubai and Rio… Moo’s Tennis Blog will be focussing on the Dubai Duty Free Championships where four of the world’s top ten are in attendance. Dubai has been hit with a string of withdrawals; the tournament announced pre-draw that Australian Open finalists, Serena Williams and Angelique Kerber,…
Missed out on the tennis this last week? Match Points is here to bring you up to speed with all the happenings from St. Petersburg and Kaohsiung, other WTA news and the occasional snippet of ATP tennis that caught my eye. I’ll also be using this weekly feature to keep you updated with Racket Rally and Tennis Draw…
Belinda Bencic confirmed her place in the world’s top ten when the new rankings come out on Monday after defeating fellow 18-year-old, Daria Kasatkina in the semi-finals of St. Petersburg, 6-4 6-3. I’ve said it so many times this year already but Bencic’s ability to tough out wins is pretty extraordinary… it’s the mark of…
All in for this one… a battle of the 18-year-olds will be the second of Saturday’s semi-finals in St. Petersburg. While just two months separate Belinda Bencic and Daria Kasatkina in age, 52 places separate the pair in the rankings. Bencic has had the far greater exposure on the WTA tour but Kasatkina is beginning…
The St. Petersburg Ladies Trophy has produced a solid slate of quarter-finals which will all take place on Friday. First up will be the number two seed, Roberta Vinci against one of four unseeded players in the last eight, Timea Babos. This will be Babos’s first Premier quarter-final and she’s enjoying a decent year so far.…
Thursday’s match of the day in St. Petersburg will see a first clash in over three years between Caroline Wozniacki and Dominika Cibulkova. The pair have played 12 times before but had avoided each other in draws since the end of the 2012 season. While the number 3 seed, Wozniacki had a bye in the first round, Cibulkova…
Main draw action finally got underway on Tuesday at the St. Petersburg Ladies Trophy with Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Margarita Gasparyan both progressing into the second round with victories in the evening session. These were the first matches that I watched from St. Petersburg; I really like the main stadium and the court seems fast, which…
Yanina Wickmayer and Jelena Ostapenko will meet in the first round of the St.Petersburg Ladies Trophy in what is sure to be a feisty affair. Wickmayer continues to blow hot and cold; her aggressive baseline game made her a regular in the top 30 between 2009 and 2012 but she has never managed to regain that kind…
