The 250 tends to be my favorite tournament level to work and we're blessed with a trio of them this week. Plenty of names you know in action as well as several qualifiers and local wildcards you've probably never heard of.
And as a bonus we get some daytime variety sprinkled in with a 125 on clay at altitude.
I love weeks like this. The opportunity is all but guaranteed to be there but the question is can we sniff it out?
Most of the girls in Cali played last week in Florianopolis, Queretaro, or Ibague. You would expect the ones who played well at Queretaro or Ibague to be more acclimated to the altitude in Cali.
Most matches will have plenty of breaks and double faults and sometimes tanking of a set that gets out of hand which makes playing game spreads tricky.
Another bad read. Rudee looked like John Isner out there until she got up the double break and fell apart. Serving like that you would've thought there was no way she loses that set serving at 5-2. You have to credit Tjen for fighting back though and also fighting back in the first set breaker too.
I went back and forth this morning between taking the -4.5 or 2-0. Odds were similar but ultimately decided on the spread because sometimes a good gameplan against Tjen (mainly keeping it away from her forehand) can get her in a hole early before she eventually figures things out and dominates. Sort of like how Linda Fruhvirtova did earlier in the week. Linda played great tactically and definitely could have won that match if not for her fitness issues which were massively compounded in that heat.
Tjen's backhand wing has improved dramatically though ever since we scored the massive upset with TSRR in that Brazilian final. Her topspin backhand is trash but now she's moved much more to the defensive slice backhand over and over until she gets the opportunity to destroy with the forehand.
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