Dates: August 19-25, 2012
Venue: New Haven, USA
Tier: Premier
Prize Money: $637,000
Surface: Hard/Outdoors
Tournament Director: Anne Worcester

Official website: www.newhavenopen.com/

2011 Performance: Did not play.
Last Appearance: 2010 second round. Lost to Dinara Safina 7-6 7-6

Singles:
1R: Mona Barthel (GER) bt Daniela Hantuchova 6-3 7-5

Doubles:
1R: Andrea Hlavackova/Lucie Hradecka bt Daniela Hantuchova/Anabel Medina Garrigues 7-6(5) 6-2

Ouch! Not be negative but I don't see Daniela getting past Barthel...she was brilliant in parts against Kvitova..!

Order Of Play Monday, August 20, 2012

Grandstand (from 12.00hrs)
1. Melanie Oudin vs. Sofia Arvidsson
2. Daniela Hantuchova vs. Mona Barthel
3. Anabel Medina Garrigues vs. Dominika Cibulkova

Does this mean that Daniela's added one more tour player to her bff list?

Daniela can barely win a match these days, it's sad 6-3 4-1, and now 5-1, ...Daniela breaks saving 2 break points but surely it's too late to come back from 3-6 2-5, Daniela holds to 15, it's just one break, please Mona choke...Daniela breaks saving another match point, if Daniela can just hold here she'll be back even in this 2nd set...please Daniela hold...Daniela holds to love! Comon! Ah Barthel regroups and holds to love, more pressure on Daniela to push this to a tiebreak.

The only encouraging thing is that a lot of the games were very close, with numerous gps but Barthel was winning many of the important ones...same old story...Daniela just got from 1-5 down to 5-5! What a rollercoaster! Still Mona could still snatch this match in straight sets, but well done to Daniela for getting this back to being competitive.

No Daniela couldn't...

Barthel d. Hantuchova 6-3 7-5

Well it could have been a 6-3 6-1 loss so at least she started to find her range towards the end of the match...

Sigh, well I guess we can't expect anything at US Open, will all depend on the draw but I'm not sure how Daniela is going to be able to get back to even the top 30 at this rate...she's bound to get tough draws for the remainder of the season. I'm pretty depressed, Daniela may even hang up her racket at the end of this year if she doesn't get any reward for her hard work practising.

This is depressing. Daniela kept fighting and came back from 1-5 down to 5-5 in the second set so her fighting spirit and desire is still there but she couldn't sustain her revival. Her first serve was pretty good as she got 74% in and won 67% of the points on her first serve. But if she didn't get the first serve in then it was basically Barthel's point and Barthel won most of the crucial points in the match.

I just cannot see how Pistolesi can stay as Daniela's coach. She's in a terrible slump at the moment and she's gotten rid of much better coaches than him after far shallower slumps than this and she's regressing terribly, it's heartbreaking. Pistolesi has spent pretty much all of his career coaching average players and that's because he's a mediocre coach, Daniela is far better than this and with a decent coach would be doing so much better. I know Daniela's an Italophile but she surely can't be keeping this guy just because he's Italian. There have to be much better coaches available, hell, I'm available and I couldn't be any worse than him and I'd be cheaper as well. Still, if this moves him closer to the exit or even better right out of the exit, then some good can come of this.

Order of Play Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Stadium (from 12.00hrs)
1. Carla Suárez Navarro vs. Sara Errani
2. Marion Bartoli vs. Sloane Stephens
3. Hantuchova/Medina Garrigues vs. Hlavackova/Hradecka
4. Agnieszka Radwanska vs. Olga Govortsova (NB 19.00hrs)
5. Mona Barthel vs. Maria Kirilenko

fyi: Daniela's team had 4-0 and 5-2 leads in the 1st set tiebreak.
Why did Barthel not get sick yesterday, instead of making all of us ill?

I was going to research what Dani's record in 1st sets since her return is, but I kept reading the word Depressing in some of your takes, so why depress you any further?

I don't really get into the coach thing like many of you. But, as Joe Friday always said on Dragnet, "Just The Facts." If memory serves correctly, Daniela's present coach wasn't with her in Thailand, probably not in Brisbane as well. Liptak handles the Fed Cup team. He handled Dani and Dominika at the Olympics. Facts: 1 win, 1 final, 3-1 and 2 clinchers in Fed Cup, and since her return, her best results were in London. So, officially, that record is 11-2, and with Fed Cup it's 14-3. Daniela's record otherwise this year...again, don't want to be depressing. (Oh, wtf, it's 11-14.) But, giving you one more fact, in the 4 major sports here in the USA, that record gets a lot of coaches fired!