Thursday 23 June 2016

Quarters reached at Eastbourne & Nottingham

The final WTA tournament before Wimbledon, Eastbourne, has progressed to the quarter final stage (except for two third round matches still to be decided).

40 women comprised the main draw, with the 16 seeds having first round byes.  The second round was major chaos - eleven of the 16 were on the train out of Eastbourne following losses in their only match played at the seaside venue.

Surviving were top seed Aga Radwanska, fifth seed Petra Kvitova, tenth seed Karolina Pliskova eleventh seed Johanna Konta and twelfth seed Dominika Cibulkova.

Johanna defeated Petra to reach the quarter finals, after losing the opening set, the third set a 6-0 whitewash.  She was joined in the last eight by Radwanska and Cibulkova who will play each other, Kristina Mladenovic and qualifier Monica Puig (set to meet) and Elena Vesnina.

The remaining two spots will be taken by the winners of battles between Misaki Doi and Karolina Pliskova, and Andrea Petkovic and Ekaterina Makarova.

The ATP tour event in Nottingham has all quarter finalists determined, and six of the top eight seeds have made it through.  Unseeded Dudi Sela upset third seed Joao Sousa in the second round, and will play seventh seed Andreas Seppi in one quarter final.  Ninth seed Marcos Baghdatis took out fifth seed Sam Querrey in the third round to earn a quarter final match with second seed Pablo Cuevas.

The other quarter finals see top seed Kevin Anderson up against sixth seed Steve Johnson while fourth seed Alexandr Dolgopolov is challenged by eight seed Gilles Muller.

The seedings for Wimbledon have been released, and Richard Gasquet, Nick Kyrgios and Gilles Simon are the winners while Tomas Berdych, Gael Monfils and John Isner will be unhappy.  If the world rankings were strictly observed, which is the case for all Grand Slam tournaments except Wimbledon, then Gasquet would be seeded just outside the top eight and Berdych seeded to make the quarter finals.  Kyrgios and Simon would be seeded but not to make the final sixteen.

However Gasquet is seeded seven, above both Thiem and Berdych.  Kyrgios fifteen and Simon sixteen are both seeded above Monfils and Isner.  Still, grass court tennis throws up many surprises so expect the results at SW19 to often fly in the face of rankings and seedings.

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