Cam Nori, Simona Halep, Carlos Alcaraz discussed on The Passing Shot Tennis Podcast

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Wells played at the Walter vinyls, you know, 12th seat here. This is obviously not how he envisaged his Australian open going. It's a right shame. He didn't play very well. I think he said it was the worst match he played, probably in the last year, I guess. Said called a tough draw, you know, just coming back from COVID, which meant he couldn't probably hasn't been on court much of late. But what did you make of what did you make of this? Obviously, Laurie would be very disappointed. I think as British fans were disappointed. But I think it could call to go on a bit of a run here. You know, he's got to fall through out of slams before that this could be the start of another run, perhaps. I think quarter was a little bit of an unknown quantity and he maybe perhaps surprised himself with how well he played, he won the next gen finals, he's being in good form, but as you said, he had COVID. I think he was in isolation in his hotel, so I saw on social media. He was hitting the ball against the wall and it awkwardly hit him in the nether regions in like a comical comical sort of way. But yeah, on the court, yeah, he was just he was just too good against cam nori, and I do wonder if cam nori season his breakout season last season has caught up with him a little bit at the start of this season. Yes, he is also he had coronavirus over the off season. He didn't in his interview blame that as the reason why he's not had a great start. But I think he's played four four singles matches, lost them all, he's not quite at the races at the moment. And the fact that he won over 50 matches last season played lots of tournaments. I think he's going to need to, I think he's going to need to kind of scale his picks and chooses a little bit more. I think that the tournaments that he plays so that he doesn't feel potentially so jaded. Further down the line because I do think potentially this is an impact of how much Tennessee played last season and the fact that the off season is so short. I think also he know he's got Indian Wells coming up quite soon. You know, he'll be defending his title and I guess you've just got that pressure on you haven't you? And no one I think is expecting him to defend his title, so I would hope that he doesn't feel that pressure too much, but it's harder isn't it to stay at that ranking after you've had that breakout season. It's the second season syndrome. You know, it's really difficult. You've got so many more points to defend. So I think it's inevitable for his ranking will decline somewhat. But I think if he can finish, well, I'm talking about finishing the year already, but if he can kind of just think, let's not think about that too much as long as he's ranking as they're all there out to get him to stay in this evenings. I think it's perhaps inevitable it might go down somewhere. It's so hard to back it up and just a note Joel I have to correct you on your next gen finals. It was actually Carlos alcaraz, he won the next gen apologies. Next gen point, they should finally, yes, sorry. Yeah, anyway, just got to throw that in there. But let's just go back to what House we saw today at the Australian open couple of women's batches. I mean, there were some very straightforward wins for Simona Halep and Annette's conservate. I think cultivate in particular, she played senica, which could have been quite a tricky match, but obviously come to bait. You know, she's now the 6th seed. She had that epic run at the end of last season. She played really, really well. And it seems that her good form is continuing. So I feel like I haven't really spoken much about her in the build up or in our preview episode. But again, good opening from her and Simona Halep who came through against magdalena freck. But two seeds that did struggle was Elena Rebecca and arena sabalenka. Rebecca, I had to save a match point to overcome Serena DS it was two tie breaks and then 6 one in that third set. I think she's struggling still with that injury that did not care out of the Sydney event when she pulled out after having beaten Emma ratana. But so I'm not sure if she's going to be able to fulfill my predictions of making the final sadly. But sabalenka she was playing storm Saunders, Australian wild card. Her serving was abysmal at times. She 12 double four. She was down a set and a break. Genuinely thought she could be on the way out, but she did manage to battle back to come through. But yeah, sadly link is just not in good form at the moment issue. No, not at all. I was a bit painful to watch at times and again, she's going to she's using the Australia, but I think and it's not a position I don't think any tennis player wants to be she's using the she's the Grand Slam at the moment to make sure she's finding out on court as she goes her serve again, I think and it will probably click at some point and she's hoping it's sooner rather than later, but it's not the position you want to be and she very easily could have very easy could have gone out today having been a set and a breakdown. But she lives to fight another day. One player that doesn't apply to you, though, is Angelique Kerber, who lost to I think everyone's most feared round one opponent kaia kanepi, who is now 14 and 22 versus seed in the opening two rounds of Islam. So really, really dangerous players. She's won 7 of those wins against top 16 seeds as well. She beat Kerber 6 four 6 three kvitova also lost to castella 6 two 6 two. I think COVID is having a bit of injury troubles at the moment. I think we've had wrist. So not really kind of big surprise there. Layla, Layla Fernandez going out talking about U.S. open U.S. open finalists in Iberia. Fernandez, the 23rd seat went out to Madison English of Australia 6 four 6 two, which was a bit of a bit of a surprise in terms of again how in terms of that score line feel very competitive looking a bit of the highlights or a lot of errors from Fernandez who just didn't seem to be at the races, a game just wasn't there. So yeah, that was a bit of a surprise. But Madison linguists credit did play very, very well. I think she definitely played above her 133 ranking. Yeah..

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