Ready. Steady. Go! The 2021 Australian Open is underway and day 1 was all about the loaded bottom half of the women’s draw. It was actually a relatively quiet day for the seeds. I definitely expected more carnage to be honest. Three seeds fell on day 1 – Angelique Kerber, Alison Riske and Wang Qiang.…
We’re nearly there. It’s been a rocky road up to the 2021 Australian Open but the tournament is set to get underway on Monday. After the withdrawals on Friday and Saturday, and the announcement that the Grampians Trophy final will not be played at all, my attention has naturally switched to the first Slam of…
Thankfully there were no further positive cases recorded on Thursday and the tennis returned on Friday with another manic schedule. The Australian Open draw was also released overnight. My FOMO is through the roof right now 😂. All the quarter-finals from the Yarra Valley Classic and the Gippsland Trophy were played under the MCA roof…
Wednesday was one of the most manic days of tennis that I can remember. It was the last 16 of the Yarra Valley Classic and the Gippsland Trophy, as well as the first round of the Grampians Trophy. The recent news coming out of Melbourne is that there will be no play on Thursday after…
I’m really enjoying the return of the tennis, even with the overwhelming number of matches. I’ve accepted that I can’t follow everything so just trying to pick and choose the matches that interest me and check in on as many players as possible. I’m surprised how well the draws have held up so far, especially…
Monday was a mix of first and second round matches at the Yarra Valley Classic and the Gippsland Trophy. Some of the top eight seeds came out to play for the first time and they were all successful. Just two seeds (Donna Vekic and Wang Qiang) lost on day 2 of the Melbourne Tennis Extravaganza.…
And so we go again… strap yourself in for a feast of tennis over the next three weeks! Two WTA 500 tournaments, the Yarra Valley Classic and the Gippsland Trophy, both began on Sunday with 54-player draws. They’ll be joined on Wednesday by the Grampians Trophy with a 28-player draw for the players who were…
The first week of the 2021 season is in the books as the Abu Dhabi WTA Women’s Tennis Open concluded with a one-sided final and another dominant performance from Aryna Sabalenka. It’s been nice to have tennis as a distraction. There have been some great storylines from Australian Open qualifying in Dubai. The 20-year-old Brit,…
Monday’s quarter-finals (it’s weird to have quarters on a Monday) in Abu Dhabi all went three sets with the last match of the day between Elina Svitolina and Veronika Kudermetova being decided in a third set tiebreak. We’re guaranteed a new WTA finalist from the bottom half of the draw. One thing i’ve noticed this…
The final two matches on Sunday’s schedule in Abu Dhabi saw the top two seeds, Sofia Kenin and Elina Svitolina, save match points to advance to the quarter-finals. Both were rather tortuous matches which are included in this post. I think Hsieh-Kostyuk has probably been my favourite match of the week so far. Read on…
