Wednesday 29 July 2009

Follow Me On Twitter!

Drop Shots is on Twitter, so feel free to follow me. I'll be posting links to new posts so you can be alerted to updates without having to check the blog. Here's the link: http://twitter.com/dropshots

Tuesday 28 July 2009

Spotlight On ... Stefanie Voegele

Stefanie Voegele is one of Switzerland's biggest tennis hopes. The 19-year-old is currently ranked at # 75, which is a career-high ranking. She broke into the top 100 in May after qualifying for Roland Garros and getting to the second round and reached the quarter-finals of Birmingham (l. to 4th seed Li Na after beating 6th seed Ekaterina Makarova) shortly afterwards. The win over Makarova (who was ranked # 43 at the time) was her career best win. In July, she reached the second round in Prague (l. to compatriot Timea Bacsinszky). On the ITF circuit, she has made finals in Romania and Nottingham.

Stefanie was a member of the Swiss Fed Cup team this year. Her country faced Australia in their World Group II play-off, with Stefanie facing Sam Stosur and Jelena Dokic in her rubbers. Although she lost both clashes, she proved herself to be a tough cookie.

Click here to read Stefanie's "Getting To Know" interview on the WTA Tour website

Monday 27 July 2009

Off Court Photos: Istanbul Cup


Above: Patty Schnyder, Ipek Senoglu


Above: Vera Zvonareva



Above: Vera Dushevina


L-R: Anabel Medina Garrigues, Vera Dushevina, Aravane Rezai, Patty Schnyder, Vera Zvonareva, Ipek Senoglu, Cagla Buyukakcay







Saturday 4 July 2009

Spotlight On ... Noppawan Lertcheewakarn

After coming up short against British teenage Laura Robson, Noppawan Lertcheewakarn successfully hoisted the Girls' Singles title at Wimbledon today after defeating French top seed Kristina Mladenovic in three sets in the final. The Thai teenager is ranked # 406 on the WTA rankings, with a career-high ranking of # 314 that was achieved in May 2008. Noppawan has been likened to Monica Seles in terms of her style of play.

In 2009 so far, she was mixed ITF tournaments with the odd WTA event and has made a few forays back onto the junior circuit for the Grand Slam events. In February, she was given a wildcard into WTA Pattaya City (l. to Shahar Peer in the first round). Back on the ITF circuit, she suffered early exits in Sydney (l. to Ryoko Fuda in the second round after beating the top seed in the first round) and North Shore City (l. to Zi-Jun Yang in the first round) before reaching a final in Hamilton (l. to Ayu Fani Damayanti). Following this, she once again suffered early exits in Wellington (l. to So-Jung Kim in the first round), Hvar (l. to Karolina Kosinska in the second round), Bol (l. to Conny Perrin in the second round) and Makarska (l. to 8th seed Iveta Gerlova in the second round). All but Wellington were played on clay. It is pretty fair to say that her confidence probably wasn't that high going into junior Wimbledon, especially as she had lost in the first qualifying round of the senior tournament (l. to Vesna Manasieva, who went on to qualify for the main draw).