I'm surprised there wasn't a thread for this promising Romanian, so I made one. Here it is:
Date of Birth: 26/08/1990
Birthplace: Bucharest, Romania
Residence: Bucharest, Romania
Current Singles Rank: 228(Career-High)
Current Doubles Rank: 358(Career-High)
Not easy. Watch out for Vikhlyantseva in the first match already. Then follows Keys... not the toughest out there, but still, a Top10 player nevertheless.
She played very well at times and those last 2 games she made from 2-2 to 4-2 in the 2nd set were really good and then everything turned to shit till now .
Wake up and don't lose this to Arruabarrena on HC out of all people ...
Same... and I don't understand what happened Aruablabla seemed like the perfect opponent for Irina, giving her the exact balls and rhythm she likes to hit
Well, this happened... Irina loses to Arruabarrena in a match where she seemed in control... while Patty won over Mladenovic, in a match where you constantly had the feeling Kiki is gonna come back, converting one of those (many) BP's. I would have put a lot of money on the opposite results for these two matches.
That's why I (almost) never bet on sports :lol:. In all fairness, Kiki started to lose it mentally towards the end of the first set. The way she snapped at her mother when she dared suggest she was nervous was pretty funny. Irina needs to find the fighting spirit she had after her ranking dropped a few years ago and she had to go play ITF's for a while. Ideally without having to go through the ranking drop.
Yet another Irina Begu third set tiebreak win (TM) in Charleston After last year's wins against Garcia and Puig, Irina now adds Kucova to the list :lol:
Stosur next... they've never played before and I've been actually looking forward to this match-up. Since I don't watch ATP almost at all, this might be the closest I'll get. Sounds fun Good luck Irina
Volvo Car Open (USA)
R32: (10)Irina-Camelia Begu (ROU) d. Kristina Kucova (SVK) 46 62 76(6)
R16: (10)Irina-Camelia Begu (ROU) d. (7) Sam Stosur (AUS) 75 63
Hope she's ok after that weird fall chasing down a drop shot early in the second set. Seemed ok closing the match, which is good news. Also, can we somehow trick her into thinking slow hard courts are actually clay? Think she'd play even better in that case
What a great win Hard to do something against Irina when she serves like that.. only dropped three points on serve in the second set and overall she only got broken once, in a game where she lost focus at 40-0
Lost to Kasatkina 46 16 in what was by far her worst showing against the young russian this year. Her footwork got exposed, her serve was weak, the BH an error-machine... really a match to forget after that great win against Stosur. All in all tho, a really good tournament for Irina to start her beloved clay season :yeah:
Next tournament [after FC] should be Istanbul. A deep run there could take some pressure of her before having to defend those huge points in Madrid/Rome/Paris
As the people from Fed Cup put it, she was indeed Brilliant Begu in this tie and brought the winning point with a win over Watson
But now back to the tour:
TEB BNP Paribas Istanbul Cup
Main Draw
(7)Pironkova v (Q)Eraydin
(Q)Kulichkova v (wc)Aksu
Kucova v Flipkens
Maria v (3)Begu
This match with Maria is embarrassing:
- 1st set: Irina cannot hold 1 serve
- 2nd set: Tatiana cannot hold 1 serve
- 3rd set: sadly started like the 1st so I don't like where this is going
Why is it embarrassing?
Doesn't have much to do with the serve imo, the whole match is on Irina's racket but so far Tadde is just moving great all over the court, sending everything back and frustrating the hell out of Irina.
le. Irina comes back from losing the first set 16 and down 14 in the third, to win the match 16 61 75
Flawless tennis in the first set against Flipkens, the english commentator was even saying what a threat she'll be at the French Open playing like that... of course this being Irina it all went sideways after that, especially her serve :lol: Idk what she did at the end there (I'm assuming she read a prayer or something) but it worked, she finally held serve in the second to last game and broke to win the match 61 16 63 :yeah:
Now really reluctant to beat local girl ranked #257 and on her way to blow away another decent draw. Did Erdogan's minions threatened her in case she wins?
She did get frustrated right from the beginning because of the crowd and all those cheers when she misses a serve.
Luckily she was finally able to close out the second set. If she keeps her composure she should win, Basak was really solid so far but seems to be low on energy now. This MTO should help her tho...
Basak was really toast in that third set, couldn't put up much of a fight. Not a very "pretty" win but good job by Irina to hang on to that second set. SF against Buyublabla or Mertens looks like it's gonna be another tough one with lots of grinding to be done...
All these 3 sets wins are excellent for confidence so keep them coming. The question is that when bigger clay tournaments will come her game will be fine-tuned or she will be already too exhausted ?
Lost to Mertens 16 16 Each match this week she played a really bad set but came back to win the match. Today she was so shockingly bad it was no way she could come back.
Mertens with her horrible pushing only managed to hit 5 winners and 1 ace... Irina's UE's (42) account for 3/4 of Mertens' total points (58)