Darija Jurak is a 24 y.o. Croatian tennis player, winner of 8 ITF singles titles and 27 ITF doubles titles, one of which she won this year. Her favorite surface is clay and current year win/loss singles record is 15-10. Her career high ranking is 188 for singles and 108 for doubles, while her current singles ranking is 413, which is the highest she's been in almost 18 months. She reached two QF's on 25k this year.
This week she's playing in Bad Saulgau 25k, where she qualified for MD (just like last year) and drew 2nd seed and world's number 208 Tereza Hladikova (CZE) as her first opponent. Since she's defending QF from last year, a loss here could push her down some 30 places in the rankings, but let's hope for the best. She applied for doubles also, not defending anything, she and her partner play against top seeds in the first round. She's playing in Germany next week as well, on another 25k where she lost in R1 last year after going through qualies, but is defending finals of doubles.
Well, Rodionova is ranked higher than either of the Jurosi's, and was doubles #19 at one point while Lepchenko is not too far behind our girls at #65 so a pretty decent doubles player as well. That's why I said I saw it coming, especially after seeing parts of Jurosi's last match, which were anything but impressive. Oh well, onto the next one...
Not a huge surprise here, but still a shame they lost such a close one. As for Jurosi, I hope this is just a temporary arrangement. It might've been caused by their recent subpar performances in the last two matches so they might've figured some time apart could suit them for some reason. Anyway, hope things work out for the best.
In the hungarian news Marosi announced that they are not gonna play together anymore.
"Last week in Madrid we had a variancy about the coach-question and we could not agree about that. I thought it won't result the end of our partnership, but it did. I feel so sad right now, because we were on the right track and I was really looking forward to the Grand Slams, where we probably could have been seeds together. I think I did everything to save our relationship, but it wasn't enough. I need to move on. I'm looking for new goals and new partners as well. " -said Marosi who will retire at the end of this season.
It's sad, but I thought something like it was going on when I saw their performance in the Estoril final (but I didn't want to jump to conclusions). I constantly had a feeling that there was some tension going on between them. Anyway, good luck to both for the rest of the year.
Darija will probably need nerves of steel this week, cause the forecast suggests rain all the way except on Saturday. Today's program is already two hours late.
It'll definately be a tough one, especially since the Spaniards are pretty much a standard team, unlike the newly-formed Jurak/Chan. They've reached the semis of Madrid and the quarters of Melbourne this year - they're not seeded simply because they didn't play enough tournamnets in the season, but when they team up it's usually a great combo. Good luck Darija!