TENNIS NOTTINGHAM – For the majority of occasional tennis fans, the grass season starts with Queen’s, Halle and Birmingham, but for some of the grass specialists, it starts during the second week of Roland Garros, it starts from Nottingham. From Nottingham Giulio Gasparin
For the majority of occasional tennis fans, the grass season starts with Queen’s, Halle and Birmingham, but for some of the grass specialists, it starts during the second week of Roland Garros, it starts from Nottingham.
In the heart of England, the city hosts one of the toughest ITF events of the whole year for women and same can be said for the ATP challenger.
The women’s field suffered from a few withdrawals, starting with the top seed Christina McHale, who injured her wrist in one of the last training sessions before the start of the tournament.
The surface requires a lot of adjustments, especially coming from clay: topspin suddenly becomes a disadvantage, slices are trickier, serve and return fundamental.
It makes no surprise to see then that all the big servers made it far, so that Kristyna Pliskova won the title for women, while Marinko Matosevic reached the final in the challenger by beating Gilles Muller in the semis.
The winner of the male title, Cypriot Marcos Baghdatis, commented in this way his first challenger win since 2009: “I’ve had some troubles lately, in the past year…and a half I can say, you know, some health problems, but now I am feeling good and you know, what is in the past is in the past, so I am looking forward to the future and I am feeling everything is fine with my body, so it is great!”
The former top 10 lost no sets en-route to the trophy, despite sneaking into the draw as an alternate because of a late registration, beating players like Benjamin Becker (in round 1), Igor Sijsling (semifinal) and Matosevic in the final.
The road to the title was not as easy for Pliskova, who often needed tiebreaks to close sets and three sets to close the final against Zarina Diyas.
Despite the seeding –Pliskova was unseeded- many players showed how natural predisposition to the surface is sometimes more important than the rankings, so qualifiers Eleni Daniilidou and Anett Kontaveit reached the quarter finals, together with Melanie Oudin.
Home crowd’s favourite Johanna Konta and former junior superstar Michelle Larcher de Brito got even to a step further.
The grass season for WTA and ATP tournaments will now continue with the more famous tournaments named above and it will reach its peak at Wimbledon, in two weeks time.
