Deja-vu for that to happen twice in a month isn't great, Cornet certainly has the mental edge over Daniela thats for sure, the amount of UE's she makes in situations of pressure.. no-one can win when they're making that many

lets hope she doesnt meet Cornet again!

What also sucks is that she's been given some pretty decent draws as well. Brisbane, Sydney, AO and now Paris, she was given quite decent draws. She certainly didn't draw any of the big players and could have really worked her way into the draw and gotten a couple of, at least, QF placings. With her ranking now at 41 and most likely unseeded in future tournaments, she may not get as lucky in the draws, and that's what makes these losses frustrating also.

Still, she has shown that she is capable of playing well lately (i.e. most of her match against Wickmayer, her whole match against Makarova and Set 1 against Cornet). She probably just needs to maintain that high level and not give away big leads. Easier said than done in that last match, especially seeing as Cornet was getting back a lot of balls, but Daniela was in the winning position 99% of the time, and really could have moved in and finish the point.

Oh well, on to Dubai, where hopefully she turns things around, like she did during the Middle East swing in 2007. It is no doubt a tough field, but with *fingers crossed* another decent draw, hopefully Daniela can FINALLY take advantage.
These bad results have to end somewhere. It's been way tooooo long since I've felt happy about Daniela's performance in a tournament.

So I watched the match and it wasn‘t that bad. Daniela played much better than she did in Melbourne. There is no comparison between these two matches. I was a little afraid to watch the match after reading so many incredibly negative comments, but it was ok afterall. I can almost say that Daniela pleased me. When I compare it to how she looked last year after coming back from the injury, she is on a completely different level now.

She showed a lot of improvement on serve and return. I even think that never in her career she returned better. At Melbourne she wasn‘t at this level, but since Fed Cup I‘ve been in awe. Of course she misses here and there, but is very aggressive and Cornet had no idea what to do. Just like Wickmayer and to a lesser extent Makarova – only because she is a lefty. The biggest difference in comparison to previous years is that against 2nd serves Daniela steps inside the baseline, takes the ball early and aims close to the sidelines, especially from her backhand wing. Formerly she stayed behind the baseline, even when facing 2nd serve, which always irritated me so much, she was waiting for the ball to hit it and tried to place it deep down the middle. Her opponent thus had a bit more time to recover and to get back in position. Now that Daniela steps inside the baseline she takes off some time from her opponents to recover, therefore her returns are more dangerous and set up the points nicely. When returning 1st serve she keeps aggressive approach and attacks when she can. After all those years it‘s a nice change and I hope Daniela will continue like that because it works pretty well.

1st serve works pretty well too, especially serve out wide from both sides is very potent. There still is a room for improvement regarding 2nd serve, though. Daniela tends to follow that notorious pattern from previous years when she always aims at backhand of her opponent and hits a short ball with a lot of spin. It is kind of a safe bet, because most players would pound Daniela‘s 2nd serve with their forehand, but nowadays many players possess very good two-handed backhand and they can return the ball very well with it. Especially from ad court, where they have court opened in a wider angle and therefore have a larger space to place the ball in. Cornet isn‘t that tall to hit Daniela's high bouncing kickers early in optimal position in front of her body, but she had absolutely no troubles to read the serve and run around her backhand in order to return it with her forehand. On the other hand I must admit that Daniela flirts with the spin a bit more, can take it off and add pace instead. Sometimes she uses a body serve or aims at forehand of her opponent, but still rather rarely for my liking. She needs to keep her opponent guessing a bit more. It‘s a work in progress.

In her post-match statement she said she had not been aggressive enough. I thought it was a similar stuff she produced in Australia and couldn‘t learn from it, but after watching the match I realized it wasn‘t exactly the case. In Melbourne she lost it already after first few games of the 2nd set and played very poorly and nervously. She also hit many shots she shouldn‘t have. But yesterday she was quite aggressive till 4th game of the last set, stepping inside the court and moving Cornet around, although on this fast greenset most rallies were over quite soon. Then lost her serve and it all went wrong, short balls, worse footwork, poor execution, serve and return not that good anymore, bad timing. Cornet was in control despite losing her serve once more when serving for the match.

Final impression is quite good actually, if I discount last games of the match it‘s even better. There were mistakes at important moments, but that‘s Daniela‘s game, she‘ll always make errors. Very good serve, excellent return. Footwork is better with every match, but definitely not at the level it was 12-13 months ago. We can regret first game of the last set when Daniela had *0-30 on Cornet‘s serve, and was buried in defense the next point, Cornet had an easy putaway at the net but Daniela guessed the direction of the ball correctly. Unfortunately tha ball landed cca 10cm out from the left sideline. Daniela smiled at that, but it was a bad luck. She could have been *0-40 up but instead Cornet won the next couple of points and then the whole game. Once again we witnessed how important is who serves first. Daniela started on serve in the opening set, Cornet in the next two. It puts you under a lot of pressure if you have to win your serve to level the score.

In one recent interview Daniela estimated she was at cca 60% of her 2007 form. I think we can add at least 10%.

I'm sorry martin but I fail to see how that performance was encouraging in the slightest degree. yes she did miss a gilt-edged chance to break in the first game of the third set but that does not excuse what happened next as the most routine shots were flying into the net or well long/wide. It looked suspiciously like a tank and i find that unacceptable from a player of Daniela's talents.

It's disconcerting to hear that Daniela believes she lost because she wasn't aggressive enough. If anything,the problem was she wasn't patient enough,because Alize was not hurting her in the long rallies,she was just hanging in the points waitng for the unforced error.which more often than not,came along. 50+UE in a match is simply not good enough.

I think she can beat Cornet ...she will beat her the next time they meet again...
I also think that Daniela is progressing..becasue the way she play now is ok to me...
lets just wait for more tournaments that she's going to join...I hope she surprise us by beating players above her rank!

martin i agree and disagree with you
anyway i trust your instict

I'm kinda half tempted to download the game now. But i'm worried it'll just make me rage, lol.