Month: March 2022

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Tennis

Queen Ash retires…

A bombshell in the tennis world today as world number 1 and the reigning Wimbledon and Australian Open champion, Ashleigh Barty announced her retirement from tennis. Aged just 25, Barty has always been an atypical tennis player. A top junior snd successful doubles player as a teenager, Barty walked away from tennis after finding the grind of the tour not conducive to her mental health. Barty was away for a couple of years, and played cricket in her native Australia, before returning to the tour in 2016

Barty beats Muguruza, Birmingham June, 2017.

I first saw Barty live at the Birmingham WTA event, beating Garbiñe Muguruza in the semi-finals. I was paying more attention to Petra Kvitova, who beat Barty the following day in the final – her first title after returning from the hand injury sustained in a knife attack. That fairy tale return victory was a three set battle with Barty. Indeed, Petra vs Ash has been a compelling rivalry over the last few years.

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Categories
Tennis

The Ladies Killing it …

It’s March and the WTA tour is up to the Sunshine double – Indian Wells and Miami, two WTA1000 events. World number 1 Ash Barty is staying at home in Australia – that stroll to the Australian Open title took it out of her – and my other fave, Barbora Krejcikova is unfortunately injured. Krejcikova is up to world number 2 and would have been the top seed at Indian Wells, but that arm injury she picked up in Doha ruled her out. its unclear if she will be back for Miami, but a good chance for the other form players to overtake her and bag themselves a big title.

Surprise package of the year so far is undoubtedly Jelena Ostapenko. She took the title in Dubai and made the semis in Doha with some scintillating tennis. Ostapenko is one of the most entertaining players to watch on the tour. She has THE best facial expressions and her all out, all or nothing game is pretty devastating. She beat my beloved Petra in the QF, in a match Petra should have win. She served for every set and had match points, but Ostapenko was that bit more fearless at the key moments. Ostapenko then beat my other fave, Krejcikova and demolished my current nemesis, Garbiñe Muguruza in Doha. That was a real schadenfreude moment. Ostapenko ran out of steam against one of the other form players, Anett Kontaveit, who similarly ran up against a peaking Iga Swiatek in the final.

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Tennis

Krejcikova hits the heights!

New world number 2! Its funny the way things go as Barbora Krejcikova just had her most disappointing couple of weeks in the middle east swing, winning 2 and losing 2 matches. The losses to Yastremska and the red hot Ostapenko were, in retrospect, not awful, but still were surprising, especially the rather flat way she played. She now equals the highest ranking of her mentor, Jana Novotna and fellow Czech Petra Kvitova. Krejcikova is currently world number 2 in both singles and doubles.

Some achievement! Krejcikova will stay pretty high in the rankings until Roland Garros, regardless of how the next few months go, but after excellent consistency following that slam win, I hope she can pick up her form after a pretty flat middle east swing and shine again in the US sunshine double of Indian Wells and Miami.