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Aussies Abroad in WTA and ATP Feb 14-20

Roar Guru
13th February, 2012
5

It was another busy week for Aussies Abroad in both the WTA and ATP with plenty going on both here and abroad.

This week we’ll look back at that including Australia’s Davis Cup victory over China, an Australian win at Caloundra in the ATP Challenger Tour and how the women did at the WTA tour events at both Paris and Pattaya City.

Following this we’ll look at this week which includes the rankings and the tournaments which involves Australians in WTA events in Bogota and Doha as well as the ATP event in San Jose.

LAST WEEK:

DAVIS CUP:

Last weekend, Australia played China in the Asia/Oceanic Group I in the Davis Cup at Geelong. Bernard Tomic, Lleyton Hewitt, Matthew Ebden and Chris Guccione represented Australia while Ze Zhang, Wu Di, Ya-Nan Ma and Zhe Li represented China.

Overall it was a comfortable victory for the Australians and as predicted last week the Aussies won 5-0 and it was all over by Saturday.

In the singles matches, Bernard Tomic and Lleyton Hewitt had comfortable victories both defeating their opponents in straight sets. Tomic defeated Wu Di 6-4 7-6 6-3 while Hewitt defeated Ze Zhang 6-2 6-1 7-6.

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The dominance continued in the doubles with Guccione and Hewitt defeating Zhe Li and Ze Zhang 6-2 6-2 6-2 to wrap up the tie and continue their undefeated streak in Davis Cup which now stands at 3.

Finally both Ebden and Guccione were given a chance to play in the dead reverse singles ties and both performed well to complete the whitewash for Australia. Ebden defeated Ya-Nan Ma 6-4 6-2 while Guccione who played singles for the first time in three years accounted for Wu Di 6-2 6-4.

The win for Australia wasn’t a huge surprise with most people expecting a comfortable victory. The pleasing thing though was Australia didn’t run into trouble throughout the weekend which could have happened against a team who could have produced the unexpected.

Australia will now play South Korea in April for a place in the World Group play off and Aussies Abroad will preview the fixture when it comes closer to the event.

WTA Events:

Last week there were two WTA events held in Paris and Pattaya City respectively. In all four Australians were in action, with three at Pattaya City and just the single representative in the Paris event.

At Pattaya City, Sacha Jones, Casey Dellacqua and Anastasia Rodionova competed in the WTA event in Thailand. For Sacha Jones, she fell one step short of making the main draw for the event losing to China’s Yi-Miao Zhou 6-3 6-7 6-2.

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For Dellacqua and Rodionova they both made the first round of the tournament and could have faced each other in the second round. Dellacqua played Maria Kirilenko in the first round while Rodionova played Iryna Bremond with both winners facing off in the second round. Unfortunately that failed to materialise with Dellacqua losing valiantly to Kirilenko 4-6 7-6 6-3 while Rodionova comfortably defeated Bremond 6-4 6-0.

This meant that Kirilenko played another Australian and again she would come out as the victor defeating Rodionova in another tough 3 set match, 2-6 6-3 7-6.

At the other event in Paris, only Jarmila Gajdosova represented Australia and she disappointed, losing in the first round to Monica Niculescu 6-1 4-6 6-4.

Once again like the week before in the Fed Cup, the first set cost Gajdosova with the Australian losing despite winning the second set.

This is the third time this has happened to Gajdosova and you feel that this needs improvement if the Australian is to potentially crack a top 30 spot in the world.

CALOUNDRA:

Finally, we move to the second ATP Challenger event to be held in Australia in the past fortnight; with the Caloundra tournament in Queensland’s Sunshine Coast.

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Like Burnie the week before, a large contingent of Australians competed in the main draw. Overall 21 Australians competed for the tournament with Marinko Matosevic the highest ranked Australian while Chinese Taipei’s Yen Tsun Lu was the highest ranked player and the number 1 seed.

In an impressive week for the Australian players, six made it to the quarter final stages of the tournament while James Duckworth, Greg Jones and Marinko Matosevic made the semi-final.

Matosevic and Duckworth faced each other in one semi-final while Jones faced Yen Tsun Lu in the other semi. Matosevic defeated Duckworth in straight sets 7-6 6-3 while Jones set up an all Australian final after impressively defeating Lu 6-3 6-7 7-6 in the other semi.

Matosevic would be too strong in the final for Jones easily defeating him 6-0 6-2. It is Matosevic’s third challenger tournament victory and his first in Australia and becomes the first Australian since Joseph Sirianni in 2007 to win the Caloundra tournament.

NEWS:

Two pieces of news wraps up last week’s action in Aussies Abroad. The first involves Australian Carsten Ball who competed in the Dallas Challenger in the United States last week.

After qualifying for the event, Ball then upset no. 1 seed Ryan Sweeting before losing to eventual winner Jesse Levine in the quarter finals.

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Finally the AIS have announced their scholarships for tennis for 2012. On the men’s side, James Duckworth, Ben Mitchell, Luke Saville and Jason Kubler have all been given scholarships while Ash Barty and Naiktha Bains were amongst the women given scholarships into the AIS.

RANKINGS:

ATP
36 Bernard Tomic
88 Matthew Ebden DOWN 5
143 Lleyton Hewitt DOWN 13
165 Marinko Matosevic UP 35
186 Greg Jones UP 33
187 James Duckworth UP 23
210 Ben Mitchell UP 12
258 Matt Reid UP 4
270 Peter Luczak DOWN 1
300 James Lemke DOWN 4

No change again amongst the top four Aussie men but the Davis Cup did hurt the rankings for both Hewitt and Ebden who went down 13 and 5 positions respectively. The big winners were the three semi-finalists of the Challenger event in Caloundra. Matosevic moved up 35 spots while both Jones and Duckworth moved up 33 and 23 spots respectively. Jones following his finalist appearance now moves past Duckworth as the 5th best Australian in the rankings.

On a side note, youngsters Luke Saville and Jason Kubler significantly rose in the rankings. Kubler moved up 64 places to 401st in the world while Saville moved up 282 places to 886 after his first round victory at Caloundra.

WTA
5 Sam Stosur
41 Jarmila Gajdosova DOWN 1
76 Jelena Dokic DOWN 9
96 Anastasia Rodionova UP 2
105 Casey Dellacqua DOWN 2
132 Olivia Rogowska UP 9
196 Isabella Holland DOWN 1
230 Bojana Bobusic UP 8
232 Sacha Jones DOWN 1
259 Monique Adamczak UP 10

Like the men, no real changes in the women’s ranking this week with the top five staying roughly in the same position.

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The only change in the top ten is Bobusic who moves to 8th best Australian with Sacha Jones moving down to 9th. Sam Stosur is still in the top 5 in the world and is still the highest ranked Australian.

THIS WEEK:

This week, the focus returns to tournaments for the WTA and ATP with the first key events after the Australian Open taking place.

For the women, the Premier Event in Doha is taking place this week, as well as another tournament in Bogota.

For the men, the first 500 point event of the season takes place in Rotterdam with San Jose and Sao Paulo also going on this week. In all seven Australians are taking place in three of the tournaments occurring this week.

DOHA:

Four Australians are competing this week in the WTA tour event in Doha. Sam Stosur and Jarmila Gajdosova have qualified for the main draw; however both Casey Dellacqua and Anastasia Rodionova failed to make it past qualifying.

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Rodionova actually pulled out of the tournament handing her opponent a walkover, while Dellacqua lost to Kateryna Bondarenko in the final round of qualifying 6-3 6-1 to also miss out on a spot in the tournament.

As for Stosur and Gajdosova, well Stosur as the third seed in the tournament has been given a bye to the second round where she will play either Sorana Cirstea or Jarmila Gajdosova. This is very intriguing because if Gajdosova wins then it sets up an all Australian second round clash; however if Cirstea wins then it sets up a repeat of the Australian Open first round clash between Cirstea and Stosur which ended up going to the Romanian player.

If Stosur can get past that hurdle then she has a favourable draw with Zvonareva on her side of the draw and Stosur having a very good record against the Russian.

BOGOTA:

Jelena Dokic is the only Australian to compete at Bogota this week after many chose to play or qualify at Doha. Dokic for the tournament is the 4th seed and she will play a qualifier in the first round and with not many big names in this tournament it could be a perfect opportunity for the Australian to win a title on the WTA tour. It will be interesting to see how her week goes.

SAN JOSE:

Finally to the men’s side and with no one competing at either Rotterdam or Sao Paulo, all eyes will be focused on San Jose with two Australians competing at the American event. Carsten Ball and Matthew Ebden are the two in action over the week and unfortunately for Ball he failed to make it past qualifying for the event losing in the second round to Tim Smyczek.

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For Ebden he will face Israeli Dudi Sela in the first round and is every chance of beating him and progressing to the second round where he could face a potential battle against South African and 6th seed Kevin Anderson.

That’s it for another week of Aussies Abroad, join us next week as we review this week’s action and look ahead to next week on the WTA and ATP tour.

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