Jules got a great draw in Stuttgart, traditionally one of her best tournaments and of course she is a former champion, can anyone believe it's been 5 years!?
it´s actually not Vinci/Q in 2nd round, it´s Vinci/Makarova!
H2H is 4-0 for Julia, Cornet is almost like Peer for Julia so far, so I have to say that I am quite confident that Julia will win this time as well, she likes playing Cornet obviously.
I hope that she won´t disappoint, good luck!!
5-0 head to head now.
Won 4 and 0.
I missed it but considering Julia has won this tournament before and the head to head together with Alize's poor form this isn't a surprising result. Alize must find Julia's game particularly bothersome for some reason. Or perhaps Julia just likes the way Alize hits the ball?
I can imagine Julia doing well here again. Memories will help to put her mind in a good place here.
Scoreline looks good, the match itself was not that great but obviously enough for Cornet.
Julia started quite well, *31 30-0 lead, then her 1st serve percentage dropped a bit and she started to make tons of UEs, especially on her fh side, some were close to the line, other UEs were really wild.
Anyway, Cornet barely put any pressure on Julia herself, hardly winners from her and she was not able to take advantage of Julia´s quite poor movement as well, so it was all about Julia obviously and Cornet struggeled a lot with her serve and in the end Julia won the first set with a nice bh volley winner.
2nd set was much easier, Cornet was done and played really bad and Julia made less UEs, her serve was quite good today although she hit only one ace, at 30* in 2nd set Cornet had a MTO timeout because of nose bleeding but it did not really influence her, Julia again had some problems at *40, when she lost concentration a bit but she was able to fight through it and then Cornet lost her serve to love.
Vinci next, who played quite a good match against Makarova today, Julia definitely has to improve if she wants to have a chance, she has to move better to deal with Vinci´s slice and has to cut the number of UEs which will be tough as she surely has to play aggressive to keep the points short against Vinci, hope she gets a bit more aces/service winners than today and then she might have a chance but I don´t really expect her to win it but you never know, Vinci has some poor matches here and there as well and the surface should suit Julia more, so we´ll see...at least Julia did not disappoint today, Cornet was really a good draw here!
She started poorly but ended the match playing quite well. However, not quite well enough to defeat Vinci for the first time. I felt like she missed out on several games in the second set where she had a half chance to break and she didn't turn those into proper opportunities.
well...expected
She was ok against Cornet but not impressive and that level of play is just not enough against someone like Vinci, poor start, after that it was ok, not good enough on return as usual and too many UEs, same old story, decent tournament with that one win but nothing special obviously,
2nd round points to defend in Madrid, then 4th round points from RG, hope she can get some wins here and there to stay close to top 50, that should be her goal at least.
Sakkari plays a good season but I saw her a few times in streams and she somehow does not impress me at all!
Gibbs is really solid and a fighter but does not have any bigger weapons, don´t know much about Tig to be honest, but in general a decent draw for Julia, she should be able to qualify here, good luck!!
Sakkari is mostly annoying, Putintseva lite. Gibbsy is a bit of enigma as she hasn't really played too much on red clay so far, certainly not the new and improved version of her.
well, these weeks used to be her highlight some time ago but this year just another disappointing result!
lost 67 57 to Sakkari
No breaks in 1st set, good on serve, then at 3-3, 4-4 and 5-5 she has BPs in each service game of Sakkari but can´t take take one, saves a SP at *4-5 herself but then loses the TB.
Awful start into 2nd set, *0-4 15-40 down but then she fights and comes back to 5-5 just to lose her serve again with a DF at BP, just typical and bad.
That's a disappointing one for Julia. A lot of these european players are very comfortable on the clay and compete hard, you really need to bring your game with you otherwise losses like this tend to happen.
Wow. That is a bad loss. I was hoping that by this time in the season, now that she's been with a new coach for about half a year, that she would have found her groove and started focusing on some neglected areas like her footwork. Instead, her fundamentals across the board are crap. I would love to know what's going on behind the scenes, but Jule's usually not very forthcoming about that kind of stuff .