WTA 500 Stuttgart 4/17 - 4/23 2023

[ashkor87]

Tough tough first round matches! Krejcikova vs Samsonova, Raducanu gets Ostapenko..badosa vs kasatkina..

[ponchi101]

Ridiculous draw in terms of how tough it is. It is indeed a slam starting in the round 3.

[JTContinental]

Swiatek? A given. No refutation there, with only one caveat: last player to defend a slam title was Serena at Wimby ('15-'16). So, sure, she will be the favorite. But not at 75%.
Sabalenka. 3 times R32 at RG. That is her best showing. But she has won Madrid, at that altitude (ha!) of 600 mts. Sincerely, don't see her doing much.
Ons. Sure, why not? She likes the surface, and seems to be back after yesterday's win.
Samsonova. You have your soft spot for her.
Krejcikova. I say she will be the second best player of the season.
Rybakina? See you on grass, my dear.
Bencic? Nah, she will do fine, and will be a force in the smaller 500's.
Coco. She is the RG RU from last year. She will do better than you expect. Repeating that final will be tough.
Dark horse. Mademoiselle OTHER. Get ready for some unknown players winning something big (not a 1000).

i have been warned not to criticize Coco - there is a law against it, apparently.. so I will say only this - she had a very good draw at RG last year.. indeed, when I saw the draw, I said she is going to the semis (didnt expect Trevisan to be her semi opponent, so didnt say finals!) - you can check if you like on last year's forum.

<heavy eye roll> what I actually said is that you don’t need to dunk on her in literally every tennis-related thread on the the forum, which you are doing yet again in this backhanded fashion.

[ti-amie]

Day 3 Order of Play

Centre Court
Starts at 03:30 PM

ESP C. BUCSA (5) vs GER T. KORPATSCH (6)
FOLLOWED BY
RUS E. ALEXANDROVA vs CRO D. VEKIC

Court 1
Starts at 12:00 PM

CHN Q. ZHENG vs USA A. PARKS
NOT BEFORE 3:00 PM
UKR L. KICHENOK/LAT J. OSTAPENKO (1) vs RUS V. KUDERMETOVA/RUS A. POTAPOVA

[ti-amie]

[JTContinental]

Foot injury is what Twitter says

[JTContinental]

Martic had already qualified? It looks like Alycia Parks got the LL spot

[ti-amie]

I saw most of the second set of Vekic vs Alexandrova. Vekic wins in straight sets 7-6(7), 7-6(5). It looked for a while that Alexandrova would force a third set but as she so often does she faded away.

[JTContinental]

Vekic really seems to be thriving under Pam's coaching

[ti-amie]

Day 4 Order of Play

Centre Court
Starts at 12:00 PM

ITA M. TREVISAN vs BRA B. HADDAD MAIA
UPCOMING
RUS D. KASATKINA (7) vs ESP P. BADOSA
UPCOMING
GER T. MARIA vs SUI Y. IN-ALBON
UPCOMING
LAT J. OSTAPENKO vs GBR E. RADUCANU
UPCOMING
CZE B. KREJCIKOVA vs RUS L. SAMSONOVA

Court 1
Starts at 12:00 PM

USA N. MELICHAR-MARTINEZ/MEX G. OLMOS (3) vs GER V. HEISEN/EST I. NEEL
UPCOMING
ESP C. BUCSA/GEO O. KALASHNIKOVA vs JPN M. KATO/INA A. SUTJIADI
UPCOMING
CRO P. MARTIC vs RUS A. POTAPOVA
UPCOMING
RUS A. PANOVA/RUS Y. SIZIKOVA vs SVK T. MIHALIKOVA/USA A. PARKS
UPCOMING
UKR N. KICHENOK/BEL K. ZIMMERMANN vs USA D. KRAWCZYK/NED D. SCHUURS (2)

[ti-amie]

Day 5 Order of Play

Centre Court
Starts at 12:00 PM

CZE K. PLISKOVA vs GRE M. SAKKARI (8)
FOLLOWED BY
USA C. GAUFF (5) vs RUS V. KUDERMETOVA
NOT BEFORE 5:00 PM
GER J. NIEMEIER vs KAZ E. RYBAKINA (6)
NOT BEFORE 6:30 PM
B. KREJCIKOVA OR L. SAMSONOVA vs BLR A. SABALENKA (2)
FOLLOWED BY
TUN O. JABEUR (3) vs LAT J. OSTAPENKO

Court 1
Starts at 12:00 PM

CZE M. KOLODZIEJOVA/POL A. ROSOLSKA vs CHN Y. XU/CHN Z. YANG
FOLLOWED BY
CHI A. GUARACHI/NZL E. ROUTLIFFE vs ROU M. NICULESCU/JPN M. NINOMIYA
NOT BEFORE 3:00 PM
GER M. BARTHEL/GER A. FRIEDSAM vs CAN G. DABROWSKI/BRA L. STEFANI (4)
FOLLOWED BY
RUS V. KUDERMETOVA/RUS A. POTAPOVA vs JPN M. KATO/INA A. SUTJIADI
FOLLOWED BY
Quarterfinal
TBD vs TBD

[ti-amie]

I'm glad someone posted this because it seemed that there hadn't been a handshake at the net.



There was an expression on Alona's face when she walked onto the court that made me say to myself "girlfriend has taken all of her crazy pills today". She romped over Raducanu in just under an hour - 59m I think.

I don't know what they're going to do about Raducanu. They did a slo-mo of her trying to track down a shot by Ostapenko and she looked slow. Maybe it's the surface? I don't follow her that closely.

I think this post by @MOBY sums up what happened to Raducanu today.

Ostapenko isn't going to make that many mistakes off what are essentially practice balls that do not challenge her in terms of speed, placement or spin. The problem with Raducanu isn't that she can't hit the occasional great shot. It's that her rally ball is a nothing ball, and not a nothing ball in the way Agatha's were nothing balls -- because those were at least off-pace, low, and tricky to tee off on.

[ponchi101]

2 & 1. That is indeed a romp.
I am as curious as you are. Has Emma ever expressed opinions about playing on clay? Does she like it, dislike it?
Maybe she was just at the receiving end of one of Alona's "on fire" days.

[ti-amie]

Krejcikova is beating up on Samsonova 6-2, 3-0

[JazzNU]

I saw the ATP show yesterday. A few of the top guys (Stefanos and Zverev, to name two) were saying "watch out for Tommy Paul at RG. He likes the stuff, and he is good on it".
It surprised me, but those two should know a bit.

Tommy is the only one of those three to actually hold a RG title of some kind, so yeah, he can play on clay. It was long viewed as a his best surface, that was always the talk about him.