New Year, new challenge
The big story of these first two weeks in Australia is unfortunately not tennis related but climate related... What has been happening because of the fires is horrific. It has been so sad to see it happening every day on the news... Luckily, at this moment, the situation has improved thanks to some rain (finally!) and of course an amazing job from the firefighters.
Daniella played a 25K ITF Women’s tournament in Bendigo, moved from Canberra because of the haze created by the fires. She played at the same site as the ATP challenger and had the chance to see players such as Kohlschreiber, Seppi and Sinner... She also had great training sessions with girls in the top 150 WTA, as well as Diane Parry, the world number 1 ranked junior. Daniella won her first round qualies against an Australian girl 6-2 6-0 and lost her 2nd match against Urszula Radwanska, WTA 220 and former world number 29 by the score of 4-6 4-6...a great experience! After the tournament, we were on our way to Traralgon (5-hour train ride from Bendigo) for the ITF Junior grade 1, “warm up” tournament for the Australian Open.
Daniella trained well for 3 days in Traralgon, playing practice sets against girls ranked in the top 100 ITF Juniors. On Wednesday January 15th, the 1st day of qualies was cancelled because of bad air quality... The next day, Daniella played 2 matches, which she both won:
Koharu Niimi (JPN) 6-2 4-6 10-5
Hibah Shaikh (USA) 6-0 6-4
Thus qualifying for the main draw, which will start tomorrow, January 17th.
