Riya Bhatia thread

[vparam]

Seems like a “race to the bottom” to describe the state of women’s tennis in India. All of Sania’s success didn’t produce much of anything over the last decade. I sure expected more when Sania came to prominence. The AITA and others are to blame. Sorry for the rant! Just so frustrated!

[jayakris]

Riya Bhatia is at the W25 in Florence, S.Carolina, USA.

And she lost the R1 to the 3rd seed Min Grace (USA,356), 16 67(4) today...

[jayakris]

At the W60 in Macon, Georgia, USA (Hard)

[R1] Riya Bhatia (IND,485) vs (5) Emma Navarro (USA,139)

Yet another Indian seeing a seed in the first round... Actually I don't even know how she made the draw. This W60 seems to have a few top-200 players and then nobody. Riya was only 4 out from the main draw list earlier and made it in. There being two W60s (at Macon in the USA, and Saguenay in Canada) and a W25 in Forth Worth - all in North America may be the reason why the draws are bottom-light and top-heavy? There are so many qualifier/LL spots in the draw but no luck for her and she has to play a pretty good seed.

[jayakris]

[R1] Riya Bhatia (IND,485) l. (5) Emma Navarro (USA,139), 36 06

Actually this looked like a competitive match for the first six games when it was 3-3... Then Riya got broken at 15-40 and the rout was on. The match got over pretty fast in the next 9 games, as Riya was broken 5 times in a row, and was not in the match anymore.

Starting from the semifinal loss in early August at the Rio W25, it is now 6 straight losses for Riya and she has not even taken a set in any of those matches. A bad patch for her too.

[Dinesh]

Riya is playing in South America again, starting this week at the W60 Barranquilla ITF.

I started watching the live stream because she was leading 5-2 but ended up giving all the lead to only lose the first set TB 0-7. I won’t watch anymore

[jayakris]

... And she lost after a good fight ..

At the W60 in Barranquilla, Columbia (Hard)

[R1] Riya Bhatia (IND,580) l. Viktoria Morvayova (SVK,377), 67(0) 67(5)

I had some work and couldn't watch it except the final tiebreaker. She was hitting the ball well. Hard luck on a netchord at the second match pt there. She seems to have played better than she did in the last 3 or 4 matches which were all losses.

[Dinesh]

She hasn’t won a singles match since August. 7th straight loss. And in doubles, she’s facing the 2nd seeds of the tournament with a German partner.

BTW, there are no ITF tournaments in S America for the rest of the month, except for a few WTA 125 ones where the cut-off is usually high and doesn’t feature a qualifying draw over the size of 8, so I’m not sure why she traveled there only for a week.

[jayakris]

Riya Bhatia qualified into the W25 in Orlando, Florida, USA.

[Q1] (5) Riya Bhatia (IND,732) d. Alessandra Crump (USA,ITF-728), 60 62
[Q2] (5) Riya Bhatia (IND,732) vs (9) Rhiann Newborn (USA,833), 16 64 [10-4]

Main draw not made yet...

[Dinesh]

^^^ She plays the second seed Robin Anderson in R1 of main draw.

[Dinesh]

SURPRISE! Riya upsets the second seed 2&3. Not sure how that happened.

[sameerph]

Wow, that win came out of nowhere from Riya, mostly best win of her career.

At W25 in Orlando, Florida, USA

[R1] (Q) Riya Bhatia (IND,732) d. (2) Robin Anderson (USA,251) 62 63

And she gets a fellow qualifier next up.

[R2] (Q) Riya Bhatia (IND,732) vs. (Q) Sakaya Ishii (JPN,641)

17 year old Ishii is ranked 11 in ITF junior rankings and was Australian open junior semi finalist this year.

[Dinesh]

Riya gave a walkover

[jayakris]

#702 Riya is back on court at the W15 in Malaga, Spain (Hard). She beat a qualifier, Aryana Bartlett (GBR,ITF-247) 62 76(3) today, and plays the 6th seed Katarina Stresnakiva (SVK,664) in the R2.

[Dinesh]

^^^ 11 doubles faults from Riya today

[jayakris]

I cannot understand why Riya and Sahaja cannot fix their double fault problem. It cannot be this hard. Sahaja is probably making slow improvements but Riya keeps on going with this issue.