PLAYERS AMT2017

Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova
22 | Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova
Age: 24
Country: Rusia

Monica Nicolescu
35 | Monica Niculescu
Age: 29
Country: Rumania

Jelena Ostapenko
33 | Jelena Ostapenko
Age: 19
Country: Letonia

Christina McHale
42 | Christina McHale
Age: 24
Country: USA

Monica Puig
46 | Monica Puig
Age: 23
Country: Puerto Rico

Kristina Mladenovic
51 | Kristina Mladenovic
Age: 23
Country: Francia

Eugenie Bouchard
44 | Eugenie Bouchard
Age: 22
Country: Canada

Sara Errani
49 | Sara Errani
Age: 29
Country: Italy

Andrea Petkovic
51 | Andrea Petkovic
Age: 29
Country: Germany

Shelby Rogers
53 | Shelby Rogers
Age: 24
Country: USA

Lesia Tsurenko
54 | Lesia Tsurenko
Age: 27
Country: Ukraine

Annika Beck
68 | Annika Beck
Age: 27
Country: Germany

Julia Goerges
57 | Julia Goerges
Age: 28
Country: Germany

Belinda Bencic
129 | Belinda Bencic
Age: 19
Country: Switzerland

Yanina Wickmayer
63 | Yanina Wickmayer
Age: 27
Country: Belgium

Victorija Golubic
62 | Victorija Golubic
Age: 24
Country: Switzerland

Louisa Chirijo
67 | Louisa Chirijo
Age: 20
Country: USA

Katerina Bondarenko
80 | Katerina Bondarenko
Age: 30
Country: Ukraine

Daniela plays Yanina Wickmayer in the first round. The winner plays either Puig or Schiavone.C5n2gIPUsAADKaL.jpg-large.jpeg

One thing that never is surprising about Daniela is that she never stops surprising us.
In returning to a main draw after a long time has gone by, I suppose if we were allowed to hand pick her first opponent, it would be Wickmayer. I shall be rooting hard!

Great come back, great technique, great détermination !!
Very happy to have seen this match from begining to end..
Other good matches will come certainly..

Daniela faces Puig on the center court's first match, again shortly after 4 PM.

Yes the serve was good. Especially those near the T, and when Daniela was on the left side, the sequence kick serve + cross forehand works well and avoid long and exhausting rallies..
But the returns were good too, with a lot of them long and near the baseline..
Oh and I have also to mentionned the many excellent and successfull drop shots !!

Daniela lost to Puig 6-4 6-4. It took Puig SIX match points before she was able to put Daniela away and Daniela played great tennis to save the MPs. She had a BP in the last game after she'd saved 4 MPs and if she'd broken than she'd have had so much momentum for the rest of the match as Puig was getting angry and frustrated and would probably have exploded but Puig held on. BOOO!

Daniela had a loose game in the seventh game of the first set to drop serve and that was the only break in the first set. Daniela had a couple of BPs when Puig was serving for the set at 4-5 but couldn't convert and Puig was able to win the set. Daniela had a bad start to the second set as she lost her first three service games to gone down 1-4 and she was making errors while Puig was playing solidly and dictating a lot of rallies and Daniela was struggling when she was forced wide.

From 1-4 down Daniela started playing a lot better and her groundstrokes had more depth and accuracy and she was able to dictate more rallies while making fewer errors so that was putting more pressure on Puig whose level dropped a bit.

It's disappointing to lose as Daniela was a bit below her best of periods of the match where she made a lot of errors, but there were times when she played some great stuff and she showed her fighting spirit at the end of the second set and who knows what would have happened if she could have levelled that set.

Daniela had a good win here in the first round and competed well against someone 200 places above her. I think we can feel a little bit of optimism