Watched the match and Fran played very well. Albeit against not a particularly strong opponent, but given her fantastic prior tournament and all the travel and tiredness, she must be absolutely delighted. I was forced to turn off the sound to avoid listening to the most irritating commentary Ive ever heard - no idea who the guy is, but he seems incapable of keeping quiet at all - sometimes things are obvious and dont need to be described. Less can be more. And some of his comments were pure speculation and/or just wrong Herrero will play worse than this and win matches..well against players ranked in the 400s-500s or lower possibly, but what insight is that?! The Spaniard was a class below, pure and simple, her current ranking around 350 is around her career high, and thats what it looked like. But Fran was ruthless for the most part. Grrr.
If Fran beats the qualifier her R2 match would be between another qualifier and Panna Uvardy WR150 and then probably 2nd seed Cristian in the QF. All together an excellent chance to enter the top 100.
Adding just a net 15 points so far, Fran is up from her Monday WR 104 to live ranked 99.
With it being still so early in the week and with a whole batch of players who can overtake her, I very much doubt that just the R1 win will hold her in a top 100 spot. But she's off and running and with that decent draw.
A decent second round draw - Udvardy has been Top 100 but not recently - and then potentially Jacqueline Christian the No. 2 seed. A shame she's in her quarter.
There are five players within 50 points of Fran who could overtake her, Teichmann and Gracheva in Iasi R16 and Galfi and Parry in Hamburg R16 and Tomova in Hamburg R32. After that it is Rus more than 100 points behind in Hamburg R16. Teichmann, Gracheva, Galfi and Tomova play tomorrow, Fran plays on Thursday.
A win would move her up to 96 in the live rankings. There are still 9 players that would be able to overtake her, but as they are all playing in Iasi or Hamburg that would seem unlikely (impossible?).