I feel that a return to the top 20 is more than achievable given her talent, it's about utilising her talent and working effectively to make improvements. Daniela's always been a hard worker and she is resilient and determined and whenever she's been down in the past she's gotten up and come through adversity. I don't think that her coaching situation a year ago helped her at all and I also wonder how much the rumours about her private life affected her. Hopefully Daniela can be healthy next year as she withdrew from Linz citing a bad back and she didn't play in Bali while her serve and smashes lacked the potency they'd had in the past and the year fizzled out, seemingly along with her fitness. She also played a few tournaments with strapping on her leg which she'd never done prior to last season. A good rest to recover and be as healthy as possible for next year should do her a lot of good. I feel that this time she should have a better off season and be prepared for 2010 free from distractions.

A good start to the year is important. Daniela doesn't have too many points to defend and a good run in one of the Australasian tournaments would give her a lot of confidence and momentum for the rest of the year and Daniela always feels good about playing in Australia.
She could also do with a bit of luck as a lot of the time she lost to someone that had their best week of the year that tournament or she had a top player early on in the tournament. 9 of her 13 losses between Ponte Vedra Beach and the US Open were to players that played in the Tour Championship. Daniela also had good wins against up-and-comers this year like beating Oudin in LA and Oudin had a great run at the US Open, she showed a lot of fight to save the match points before beating Wickmayer at Indian Wells and she beat Bacsinszky at the US Open and Bacsinszky won Luxembourg a few months later.
2009 was strange as if you look at most tournaments individually there weren't that many bad losses and there were mitigating circumstances to a greater or lesser degree in many of her losses but taking the year collectively there were too many opportunities that Daniela let slip by, like the loss to Radwanska in Tokyo and a lot of these were matches she won in 2007 but lost in 2009. At the same time Daniela had more first round losses in 2007 than in 2009. Sometimes she had no luck like the netcord going against her late on against Petrova in Beijing. Hopefully she can make her own luck next year.

I don't think that her coaching situation a year ago helped her at all and I also wonder how much the rumours about her private life affected her.I have been very down on Daniela this year,and she made a complete hash of the coaching situation,and I believe her game has regressed. Nevertheless,I'm going to be optimistic and say that a top 15 ranking,tournament victories and a Grand Slam QF are well within her capabilities,and that is what she should be aiming for. The talent is still there.I expect suckage like this year, losses to everyone decent. Daniela is done imo. I would be very surprised if she did anything remotely interesting.You're just a ray of sunshine,aren't you,martin?

BTW what are you alluding to in her private life,chungwit? If you're referring to the Wesley Schnieder rumours,that was always a pile of BS.