[Druidia]

Tie Breaker Decides It 6-6

[jayakris]

Isha-Shahar wins 7-5 in the 3rd set tiebreaker!!

Jay

[New]

way to go Zheng!!!

[oren987]

Well done Shahar

[nitsansh]

Originally Posted by jayakris

nitsansh: "competition may not be what youy expect even in Tier5", ".. Lurhajcova likes to play in obscure Asian events" ... etc etc .. Give it a break please, about badmouthing the tournament. After all, they gave your country's biggest young hope an opportunity to play. And they are running an event with no apperance money to give this time (unlike last year when Pearce took home $150K for showing up, we are told). It is an event that is in the second year for crying out loud ... and they found a title sponsor only the day before the qualifying. Can you please give it a rest looking down on the tournament, when a bunch of guys are trying their best to get something going in Hyderabad?

Blame the "appearance-money" crap that WTA and ATP allow on the tour, if you want to.

Jay

I don't blame the organizers, and the players who showed up for the tournament definitely did nothing wrong... the pain of all the players who cancelled their commitment is their gain...
the fact is that the level of this 140K tournament is lower than many 75K if you look beyond the few top players...

I don't know what happend last year... it's typical of a first year tournament to pay big money to star players in order to "get on the map" as they say here...

The calendar this year is particularly harsh on Hyderabad, because it's the only lower-tier tournament in the eastern hemisphere between Australian Open and Indian Wells, so players who would normally play in tier 4 main draw will be reluctant to fly to India for only one week, if they don't have a guarantied place in Dubai the following week, and those who are on the brink between direct acceptance and qualifying in a tier 4 would not get into qualies in Dubai.

What I think the WTA should do is move Pattaya from its slot at the end of the year, which is a timimg as bad as can be, and put it in February so that there are 2 small tournaments back-to-back between AO and the middle-east... that can make those tournaments much more attractive for European players, don't you think?
Or you would rather keep these tournaments as weak as they are for the benefit of Asian players?

[firehorse]

The probelm with WTA India Open at that week, tWTA has 3 tournaments...usually only 2 tournamenst per week that contributes to weaker field..plus India open had a week off form japan open...I just hope that fater japan Open then India Open..it may help this eevent..after all..it was only one event... Ganz Open ( paris Indoor)..

The only solution is to move India Open after Japan Open and it will attract more and better higher rank players.....

Agree?

[Mikey]

Adriana
Jelena
Lubomira

Shahar and Isha/Shahar

Kelly
Yulia

Thanx for the scores

[jayakris]

nitsansh -- I agree with what you are saying, and a lot of the problems are because of the dates also. But in terms of organizing the event, I believe Globosport and CGK Bhupathi do run a pretty classy show there. Hopefulyl a bit more money will be there next year for them to attract a couple more big names. And the dates would be better for the lower top-100 players to show up.

No, I would rather have a reasonably good quality event, rather than to have an event where Asians would make points easier. The new title sponsors have said that their aim is to build it into a Tier-III event in the future.

By the way, IMG just had the foundation stone laid for their big sports academy (the largest one outside Florida) and expected to become their focal point in Asia, at Hyderabad. The state government came up with an obscene amount of prime land for them to set up the academy etc. Hyderabad is not going to go away, and with the state minister considered to be the biggest high-tech savvy and marketing/business-savvy politician in India, I expect things to only get better ...

Jay

[polishprodigy]

Neha i thought shikha would win

Barbara thats it girl
Prakusya but well done bhambri

[azza]

Yulia

Aaron

[nitsansh]

If you look for the real villains... blame it on the Scottsdale tournament that was folded...
Last year, Scottsdale was a tier-2 tournament on the week before Indian Wells, in conjunction with Acapulco.
The Calendar for the 5 weeks between AO and IW was as follows:
week 1: Tokyo
week 2: Paris & Hyderabad
week 3: Antwerpen & Doha (tier 3 or 4)
week 4: Dubai, Memphis & Bogota
week 5: Scottsdale & Acapulco

After Scottsdale was cancelled, WTA filled the vacancy by moving Doha to week 5 and made it tier-2. Then Hyderabad was moved to week 3 to put it next to the middle-east series.
Also, Memphis moved to week 3 because it's linked to the ATP tournament.
It was too late to make a radical change and move a tournament from another season.
If the general calendar stay the same, and the first ME tournament is 3 weeks after Tokyo, there must be 2 Asian tournaments between them to make a continuos series, or none.
Any small tournament that would be left alone in its geographical region would suffer the same fate. It also happend with Quebec last season, and I fear Bali could be in trouble this year because there is a week gap between Bali and the next tournament in east-Asia (Beijing, that replaced Shanghai).