Dates: October 17 - 23, 2011
Venue: Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Tier: International
Prize Money: $220,000
Surface: Hard/Indoors
Tournament Director: Danielle Koster Maas

Official Website: www.bglbnpparisbas-open.lu

2010 Performance: 2nd round. Lost to Angelique Kerber 3-6 6-3 6-1

Singles:
1R: [LL] Lucie Hradecka (CZE) bt [8] Daniela Hantuchova 6-7(3) 7-5 6-1

Daniela's got a qualifier in the first round and she's got Anastasiya Yakimova or another qualifier in the second round. She's seeded to play Sabine Lisicki in the quarter-final.

Singles draw:
singles.jpg

lisicki is in bad form at the moment...she played not good last week. so really a great draw!!

Lisicki has withdrawn from Luxembourg due to illness. Daniela's quarter is there for the taking.

Order of Play Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Central (from 12.00hrs)
1. Alberta Brianti vs. Anna Tatishvili
2. Daniela Hantuchova vs. Lucie Hradecka
3. Rebecca Marino vs. Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova
4. Elena Baltacha vs. Julia Goerges (NB 17.30hrs)
5. Anne Keothavong vs. Mandy Minella

This is pretty shocking and I'm really not sure what to say about this. I didn't see the match so I can't comment on how Daniela played but Hradecka is someone she should have beaten. Hradecka gave Daniela a close match here a couple of years ago and she nearly beat Wozniacki in Beijing so she may have felt a bit of confidence and also have nothing to lose as she got in here as a lucky loser, but this is still very disappointing. It does seem a lot like the loss last year against Kerber when Daniela won the first set but faded badly in the third. I don't know if this was a hangover from the thrashing by Kvitova last week. Pavlyuchenkova lost to Marino so Daniela wasn't the only seed upset today.

Maybe a change of scene in Bali will do something for Daniela and she can have a good off-season, get fit and healthy, work on her game and come back rested and refreshed for next year. This season was going so well and Daniela was getting a lot of good wins and she was only losing to top players, then she hurt her foot after Cincinnati and she's not been the same player since. Pennetta beat a lot of other good players in Beijing and Kvitova was amazing in Linz, so these aren't terrible losses but she's only had one straight sets win since she beat Pennetta in Cincinnati and a lot of her wins were struggles. Parmentier, Erakovic and Hradecka are players that Daniela would have beaten easily earlier in the year but that was then and this is now. Daniela also lost her grandmother recently and she's a human being not a machine, so that's been a factor in her end of year struggles. My heart goes out to Daniela, this must be terrible for her.

Did anyone see who was coaching Daniela?

Seriously?

Thanks for the report, Jean Raj. It doesn't surprise me that there were some bad calls involved. Even though this season has spluttered out, Daniela has still won a trophy this year and she's beaten a lot of very good players including her first wins against a no. 1 and Venus Williams so there have been some great highs for Daniela this year.

We'll see what she does about Bali but the last time Daniela got beaten by some Czechs, was getting over an injury and went to South East Asia things worked out okay. At the same time, that was at the start of the year when she was getting back to fitness and this is at the end of the year.

A little bit about Igor from Linz: Hantuchova told TASR, has not been accompanied by a coach in Linz Matej Liptak, but her brother Igor Hantuch. "It was so cool refreshment. I'm awfully glad you found time this week and it was here with me, really appreciate it. We saw a lot of fun together. By that I mean about the most and helped me a lot and it was great," said Hantuchova, who will present next week in Luxembourg. At the end of season tournament šampiónok it waits on the Indonesian island of Bali.
@ google translate.