Dates: 27 April - 2 May 2015
Venue: Marrakech, Morocco
Tier: International
Prize Money: $250,000
Surface: Clay/Outdoors
Tournament Director: Hicham Arazi

Official Website: www.lallameryemtennis.com


Last Appearance: 2014 semi-final. Lost to Romina Oprandi 7-5 3-6 6-3

Singles:
1R: Christina McHale (USA) bt Daniela Hantuchova 6-4 6-2

We'll see how Daniela does here. McHale beat her in their previous meeting and that was on clay in Charleston 4 years ago and McHale's had good results on clay. However, McHale's results this year and the end of last year haven't been good as she's 3-7 this year and the highest ranked player she's beaten this year is Cetkovska at 89 and she's lost her two matches on clay this year. However, the players that have beaten McHale have generally been pretty good - Pennetta, Petkovic & Cornet - so Daniela will have to play well. Hopefully, Daniela's recuperated from her exertions earlier in the year and she can play her best tennis.

The winner of this match will play either Svitolina or Vekic.

Daniela just missed on a seeding here as Puig passed her in the rankings by playing Bogota during Fed Cup week.

Daniela's not playing doubles even though Karin's here but the last time she played doubles at an international was Birmingham two years ago and I honestly can't remember the last time she actually played doubles at an international before that so it's not surprising she's not playing doubles here.

Daniela's also got the day off tomorrow.

Daniela's the second match on Court 1, play starts at 10:30 am .

Nope :/ and Daniela hasn't made a good start down a break 3-4 with McHale serving.

Daniela broke back to 4-4 but then double faulted to give McHale the break again 4-5

McHale holds to 15 to win the first set 6-4

Daniela's double faults not coming at the best time in the first set, she's done 4 already...

Hopefully Daniela will start getting used to the conditions now and be able to win in three sets...

Already down 0-2 in the 2nd set, my guess is McHale is moving really well, and Daniela is making too many mistakes..

4-6 0-3 when's the next flight to Madrid

Daniela had 3 bps in a row and McHale won 5 points in a row 4-6 0-4 yikes...

Got one of the breaks back 2-4, if Daniela can hold here, McHale may get nervous, comon Daniela fight...0-30 because of a double fault she has to sort her serve out...broken to 15 ;(((

McHale d Hantuchova 6-4 6-2 what a load of crap...

Where has Daniela's game gone since Pattaya???? Why does this always happen???? And she was so awesome in Fed Cup...

Revenge is not mine. Clearly Daniela's serve is all screwed up again, and outside of Fed Cup, the bugaboo of 1st round clunkers against very beatable opponents is ruling the day. Anything she had gained from Carlos is totally lost, and it's time to declare the Coach By Skype experiment a failure. And we all enjoy her photos on FB, but if I was running her page, I would have not chosen today to put up a fashionista picture. This is one frustrated fan reporting to you.
(But I still love Dani and hope for some better days. Can't help myself.)

I got a kick out of how long we kept the score of the final at Pattaya on the upper corner crawl for almost two months. With Dani struggling right now, I say put it back up! It will remind us to never give up on the good times.

And, when it's time to update Daniela's career records, let's add her Fed Cup win to give her a career total of 538. When she was closing in on 500, I delved into this and was surprised to learn that Fed Cup matches count toward a player's official career record.