Dates: 8 - 14 June 2015
Venue: Nottingham, Great Britain
Tier: International
Prize Money: $226,750
Surface: Grass/Outdoors
Tournament Director: Rebecca James

Official website: www.aegon-open-nottingham.org.uk

Last Appearance: New tournament.

Singles:
1R: Magda Linette (POL) bt Daniela Hantuchova 6-2 4-6 7-6(4)

Doubles:
1R: Shuko Aoyama/Renata Voracova bt Daniela Hantuchova/Kimiko Date-Krumm 6-3 6-1

Hopefully a change of surface can bring a change of fortune for Daniela. There have been times in the past when Daniela's had a tough clay season and an early exit at Roland Garros when she's had really good runs on one of the grass tournaments and she can do so here as the field here isn't really strong although there are quite a few decent players here. Daniela said she doesn't have big expectations for this tournament so she can play without pressure and just take things one match at a time and build momentum. It's a chance for her to play some good tennis and get some wins. She did well in the doubles at Roland Garros so hopefully she can transfer her doubles form to singles and grass is a good surface for her.

Daniela's season as Brian Clough's career:
Pattaya = Derby,
Clay = Leeds,
Nottingham = Forest.

Daniela's got Magda Linette in the first round, which is a decent opener. Second round would be against either Tomljanovic or Davis, and the quarter-final would be against Agnieszka Radwanska, McHale or a qualifier. The draw, certainly the first round, is fairly decent and Daniela should win her first round, but given her recent form she has to take things one match at a time.

MDS.jpg

Daniela's playing doubles with Kimiko Date-Krumm and they play Toyama & Moracova in the first round. The winners play either top seeds Spears & Kops-Jones or Liang & Wang in the second round. The first round is fairly reasonable although the likely second round against Spears & Kops-Jones will be very tough. It's a chance for Daniela to get some more match practice in and hopefully it's a sign that she's a little bit healthier that she can play some doubles. Karin Knapp's here but not playing doubles so it seems like that partnership is over.

Daniela & Kimiko have a combined age of 76

Davis beat Tomljanovic in a long three setter so she's next for Daniela as long as Daniela beats Linette.

It's good that Daniela's first on Centre as she doesn't have to wait around and she normally does well when she has an early start. She also does better at the smaller tournaments when she's on the main court rather than on one of the outside courts. Daniela's due a win and she's good on grass while Linette is about as good an opener as she could get. She has to take advantage of this.

Maybe Daniela should take the year off? This is just bad.

This is bad. I really thought that this was a match that Daniela would win fairly easily. The players that had beaten her recently were at least good players but Linette isn't very good and she's someone that Daniela should beat. The third set had 8 breaks of serve which says it all about the quality of the match and Daniela had BPS in all of Linette's service games. Daniela was down a double break at 5-2, fought back to 5-5, gotten broken before breaking Linette for 6-6. She was 3-1 down in the tiebreak, got back to 3-3 before losing 7-4.

A big difference in the match was the 1st serve points won, Daniela only won 47% of her 1st serve points (32 of 68) compared to 64% for Linette. Daniela won 44% of 2nd serve points against 20% for Linette and got more 1st serves in (74% to 67%) but winning less than 50% of 1st serve points makes it tough to win against anybody. Linette won 9 of 15 Bps compared to 8 of 17 for Daniela.

I know that Daniela's strong and resilient but I don't know how many more body blows she can take. She has to stay strong and positive.