Jasmine Hutton (ENG) bt Grace Gear (ENG) 11-4, 11-6, 11-8 (28m)
Lucy Turmel (Eng) 3-1 Lee Ka Yi (Hkg) 12-10, 11-6, 12-14, 11-7 (43m)
Sabrina Sobhy (USA) 3-2 [WC] Amina Orfi (EGY) 11-8, 6-11, 2-11, 12-10, 11-6 (62m)
What an upset we almost had! Sabrina Sobhy took the opening game against wildcard and world junior champion Amina Orfi, but the 15-year-old struck back to take the next two games comfortably. Sabrina built a good lead in the fourth, but back comes Amina again to earn match ball at 10-9.
Sabrina survived that, and was always in control in the decider ad Amina paid for a number of early errors.
Sabrina
“I wouldn’t say it was one of my best performances. With any wildcard, the difficulty is not ever having seen them on Tour and knowing their game plan and a clear strategy against the opponent.
“I was a little bit passive and on edge throughout the match and I was taken back by her aggression. With her being a young Egyptian, she might not have had any experience with professional players or respect you should show your opponent.
“She’s a fit, young girl that’s very aggressive, attacking and has a fast pace. She’s very eager – she’s the World Junior champion so she’s a phenomenal young athlete so all credit to her at such a young age at 15. It was, of course, difficult to play with the conditions being a warm court, late at night and it was quite difficult to find my own game plan and get stuck into my own game.”
Lucy
“The Hong Kong girls play quite similarly, so I know how they structure their tactics and what they like to do and I was mentally prepared for that and had a plan myself, which didn’t go as smoothly as I would have liked and in the end had to win ugly.
“I’ll approach tomorrow’s match an all-English affair against Jasmine Hutton like any round two match. With it being all-English there’s a bit more to it, but I’m just going to treat it as a normal round two match, the same as any other.”
For some strange reason, I cannot remember seeing Grace play and my word, I loved it! She is graceful, love her movement and hands, me, she is lovely to watch, and as those two are good friends, the match was very pleasant to watch. Jasmine’s experience and belief in her own game made the difference.
And it’s great to see Rodney Martin working with Rob Owens, it’s the A+ Team that one!!!
Jasmine
I don’t find it easy to play Grace ever because she is one of my really good friends on the tour. We’ve gone through all the years of juniors together. Today was really amicable…
I think the court is really rewarding if you get the better length, and it takes also the short ball so when you have the opportunity to take it short, it works quite well. Today I think I did that a bit better today.
She just come back from Australia as well, so she is probably quite tired, so I was trying to make it physical. Happy to be through in three today.
We are playing all the time, I’m constantly playing her at the moment, and to be honest, my whole season so far, Houston and this, I have been playing English players: Lucy Beecroft, Gina Kennedy, now Grace and Lucy! Would be nice to play someone different but it’s basically Nationals again…
Looking forward to my match with Lucy, we always have big battles….
