[4] Nouran Gohar (EGY) bt [26] Tinne Gilis (BEL) 11-8, 11-3, 11-6 (24m)
Impressed I was by young Tinne Gilis today, and Nouran was too! She surprised us by adapting superbly to the glasscourt, the Pyramids, the Terminator’s pace, matching her power actually, to the point I am thinking about nicknaming her Terminator II!
More seriously, the Belgium girl didn’t hold back, stepped up the court, and blasted her way through the first game, 5/5, 7/7, 8/8! And if Nouran finally found her best game at the end, she had to work pretty hard to close the game 11/8 in 9m.
It took the Belgium a game to recover, but she came back strong in the third, and although the score doesn’t really reflect the intensity, 2/2, 8/2. A little drop of focus from the Egyptian and Tinne is in there in a shot. But Nouran is too experienced to let one game go and she eventually closes it down in 7m….
Tinne
I felt good in the first game so I guess I might have been playing ok. I went on there rather positive, nothing to lose. But in the second I couldn’t find my length at all and anything loose she puts it away and kills you.
Third I thought oh well, you are 2/0 down, might as well go for it then!
She was up 8/3 still though, but made a few errors, so I thought alright!!! But then, she closed it down and at the end, she was just too good, her shots just amazing…
Nouran
“It was a little bit unexpected. Usually you expect that the higher seed will get adapted to the court faster, but that wasn’t the case today Tinne dealt really well with the conditions.
“I just tried to keep things simple, when you find she is playing well and things aren’t going your way then you just have to get back to basics and that’s what I did in the end.
“Sarah is a very good player, she has really good hands, is tall and is a different kind of player. She likes to hold the ball and we have kind of contrasting styles of play. It’s going to be interesting to see how we deal with it, we haven’t played a lot and the last time we played was at the World Tour Finals where it was a best of three format, so it’s quite different and we’ll see how it goes.”
