Updated Blog from Nimes

The team in Nimes has updated its blog after victories over Japan and USA yesterday.

Day 3 - Monday 12 November

Again, an early start to the day with our first match of the event against Japan at 10.30am. 

Joelle was on first against the world number 37. Joelle played a high pace game and when she was pinning her opponent behind her found the points coming her way easily. Although the Japanese player dug in well to accumulate points in the middle section of the first two games, Joelle ran away to a 9-0 lead in the third and closed the match out with ease.

Next on was Jackie against a potentially difficult, tricky and unorthodox opponent. Again, during the times when Jackie found the back corners she was in complete control, but her opponent put together several runs of unexpected winners from nowhere, which allowed her to take games two and three and with it a 2-1 lead. Jackie held her nerve well to regain control and take the fourth and fifth games with ease.

That gave Amanda the luxury of a dead rubber in her senior debut. However, her opponent was another player who liked to go for unexpected winners.  During the first game, enough went in to sneak it 12-10. From then on there only looked to be one winner as Amanda stamped her authority and found her targets more and more with attacking drives and backhand volley drops.

All in all, a good match to settle the nerves and feel our way into the tournament.

Our second match of the day was supposedly (on paper) going to be our toughest match of the pool stage. However, the Americans caused far less trouble than the Japanese and we managed to push through with three solid wins.

Joelle had a tricky one against Natalie Grainger who is a former world champion and world number 1. Although the American showed some superb racket skills and accuracy, Joelle's athleticism and intensity was clearly too much for her to handle.

Jackie put in a much more convincing performance in the afternoon and managed to contain a talented and athletic young player to come off with a 3-0 win.

Kylie opened her campaign with a win over another talented youngster. Although Kylie started a little tentatively and lost the first game, she then went from strength to strength and dominated the vast majority of the next three to take the match 3-1.

That ensured that the Kiwis won group E without dropping a match. Tougher challenges lie ahead though with our last 16 match against Canada on Wednesday afternoon being our next focus.

A day off from match play tomorrow, so a good practice session followed by laundry and a look around Nimes is in store.