Author: jeremy2878

By Jeremy Harness

Sure, the Giants have stared down sizable deficits in the final month of the season before, and they have come out victorious in the past.

However, in order to make that happen, they have made some serious headway to get within striking distance. That has not happened after the first full week of September, and as a result, the deficit that they face in the National League West has not changed much.

With the NL wild card well out of reach at this point – they are nine games back of both the Pittsburgh Pirates and Chicago Cubs – the Giants’ only hope seems to be in winning their division.

At a time where they need series wins at the very least, the Giants split their four-game series with Colorado before losing two of three on the road to the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Meanwhile, the Dodgers are going in the opposite direction and have turned it on in time for the home stretch. Besides sweeping the Giants in a three-game series to begin the month, they took three of four from the Padres while winning two out of three over the Angels to boost their lead to 8 ½ games at press time with only three weeks to play.

It continues to be said, but it is a must that the Giants get it in gear very quickly, starting with a three-game home series against the San Diego Padres, a team that they have had great success against at AT&T Park over the years.

After that series, the Giants will face the Reds and the Diamondbacks at home before hitting the road (well, sort of) to face the Athletics. If the Giants have not made progress by this point, they will most likely be watching the postseason from afar.

By Jeremy Harness

After getting swept in three games by the Dodgers, the Giants are clearly running out of time.

They did not get a good start in getting things back on track in Colorado, as they fell hard to the Rockies at Coors Field, 11-3, Thursday night.

The Giants got off to a horrible start, as the Rockies jumped on starter Ryan Vogelsong for four runs in the first inning, and things did not get much better for him as the game went along. The right-hander lasted only three innings and gave up eight runs – seven earned – on 11 hits and struck out only one hitter.

On the bright side, Vogelsong did not walk anyone, and he hit his first major-league home run in the third inning off Rockies starter Chris Rusin, a two-run shot that at the time cut the Rockies’ lead in half.

Meanwhile, Rusin went the distance for Colorado, giving up three earned runs on six hits, walking one hitter and striking out five.

The only other Giants run was scored in the sixth inning, as Matt Duffy grounded into a double play, a play on which Angel Pagan scored.

The Giants have three more games in Colorado before going to Arizona for three games against the Diamondbacks, after which they will return home to AT&T Park for a nine-game homestand against the Padres, Reds as well as the Diamondbacks.

By Jeremy Harness

The Giants played three tough games inside Dodger Stadium and performed as well as could be expected with the lineup that is noticeably decimated at this point, but they nonetheless came up empty-handed.

Clayton Kershaw, the Dodgers’ star left-hander, slammed the door emphatically on the Giants Wednesday night in a complete game 2-1 win over the Giants, completing a three-game sweep.

Kershaw was flat-out dominant in striking out 15 hitters and walking only one while giving up only six hits.

However, as great as Kershaw was, the Giants actually had a chance to at least tie the game in the ninth inning. Down to their final strike with no one on, Matt Duffy lined a single to left, and Buster Posey, facing the exact same situation, followed that up with a single of his own.

Marlon Byrd, who has filled in brilliantly for an injured Hunter Pence, could not bring that much-needed run in as he struck out on a pitch in the dirt to send the Giants on their way to Denver and trailing the Dodgers by 6 ½ games in the National League West.

The frustration seemed to boil over in the eighth inning, as manager Bruce Bochy was ejected for the second game in a row, this time for arguing a ruling that Brandon Belt had went around on pitch in the dirt.

All was not lost, however. Even though he was clearly overshadowed by Kershaw, starter Mike Leake was brilliant himself in going seven strong innings and only giving up a pair of runs on five hits. However, the big blow was a mistake pitch that Leake threw to Chase Utley in the sixth, and the second baseman sent it over the wall in right-center to give the Dodgers the one-run lead.

On the injury front, while second baseman Joe Panik started a rehab stint in Triple-A Sacramento Wednesday and is expected back in the lineup next week, there is no timetable on the return of Pence at press time.

By Jeremy Harness

Angelique Kerber won the fourth tournament of her WTA career on Sunday afternoon, as the German dug down deep and came out victorious at the Bank of the West Classic at Stanford.

Her 6-3, 5-7 and 6-4 win over the Czech Republic’s Karolina Pliskova was the first win for Kerber in two years, and it was sweet redemption for her having lost in heartbreaking fashion in the final match in this tournament just last year.

The two players were dead even in first-serve points won, but Pliskova was victimized by 10 double faults, while Kerber only committed four of them.

Kerber won the first set by breaking Pliskova’s serve three times and taking advantage of four double faults by the Check native. Pliskova, however, rallied to win a hard-fought second set, which had proved throughout this tournament to be a catalyst for victory – just ask Alison Riske, who was beaten by Elina Svitolina in Friday’s quarterfinal match after taking the first set and losing the second set by a similar 7-5 count.

Kerber, on the other hand, would not suffer the same fate. She played the third set with purpose, and while Pliskova committed three double faults, she only committed one of them. She also won 75 percent of her first-serve points and, in the process, broke Pliskova’s serve three times.

In the doubles final, the Chinese duo of Yi-Fan Xu and Saisai Zheng blew out Spaniards Anabel Medina Garrigues and Arantxa Parra Santonja in straight sets, 6-1 and 6-3.

Xu and Zheng overcame three double faults by winning 24 of their 33 first-serve points and saving three of their four break points. Meanwhile, they broke the serve of the Spanish pair five times throughout the match.

The Chinese duo set the tone early in the first set by winning an astounding 10 of 11 first-serve points while breaking the Spanish three times and not committing a single double fault. Things did not change very much in the second set, even though Xu and Zheng did commit three double faults.

They won 63 percent of their first-serve points in the final set while Medina Garrigues and Parra Santonja only won 50 percent of them.

By Jeremy Harness

Karolina Pliskova made sure that the United States would not be represented on the court at Stanford come Sunday afternoon.

Pliskova, the fourth-seeded player in the Bank of the West Classic, took down American Varvara Lepchenko in straight sets, 6-2 and 7-5, in Saturday afternoon’s semifinal match.

Lepchenko was not sharp at all throughout the match, and although she was gallant in her effort in the second set, it was not enough as Pliskova punched her ticket into the championship match.

Lepchenko did not do herself any favors in the first set by committing three double faults, and Pliskova took full advantage by breaking her serve twice en route to an easy win in the opening stanza. The Czech also won 73 percent (11 of 15) of her first-serve points and did not commit a single double fault herself, further paving the way.

In the second set, Pliskova pounded four serves by Lepchenko for aces, and she further supplanted herself in the driver’s seat by winning 18 of her 21 first-serve points while also breaking lepchenko’s serve twice more.

Standing in Pliskova’s way of the championship is a Sunday showdown with German Angelique Kerber, who did not show any ill effects of her thrilling quarterfinal win in Friday’s nightcap, downed Ukrainian Elina Svitolina in straight sets, 6-3 and 6-1.

Kerber won 63 percent of her first-serve points throughout the match and used her strong ground game, which was on full display on Friday as well, to quickly gain the advantage.

As for Sunday’s matchup, Kerber and Pliskova have faced each other five times before, with Kerber holding a 3-2 advantage. Pliskova has won two of the past three head-to-head matches, but Kerber won the last one in June, to win the AEGON Birmingham Classic title.

By Jeremy Harness

STANFORD – And then there was one.

Varvara Lepchenko, fresh off of her upset of top-seeded Caroline Wozniacki the previous evening, kept rolling along Friday night in a 6-7, 6-2 and 6-3 runaway win over Mona Barthel in their quarterfinal match to stand as the only American remaining in this Bank of the West Classic.

This marks the second straight semifinal appearance in this tournament for Lepchenko, who was born in Croatia but moved to the U.S. when she was 15 and got her American citizenship 10 years later.

“I’ve done very well here before, so I felt confident coming in here,” Lepchenko said. “I love playing in California.

“I definitely feel the appreciation from the fans playing in tournaments in the United States.”

While Barthel was very inconsistent with her serve – the German had six aces but counteracted that with six double faults – Lepchenko focused on keeping the ball in play and relying on her ground game to get ahead in the match and stay there.

Lepchenko went to the net more often and put the pressure on Barthel, who showed her wear by committing 31 unforced errors on Friday to Lepchenko’s 19.

“My focus was not there (in the first set),” she said. “I tried to loosen up in the second set, and I think it worked out for me.”

She battled with pneumonia earlier in the year and said that she starting feeling like she was in better playing shape during the AEGON Eastbourne International, the week before Wimbledon, which was held in late June. She said that after Wimbledon, she began working primarily on improving her fitness, and she attributed that to her continued success this week.

” I worked very hard to get ready for the hard-court season, and it’s starting to pay off now,” she said. “It gives you confidence that you can find your way throughout the match. I realized that, hey, I’ve got that base now, so I should be able to do this.”

She will face Karolina Pliskova, who downed Ajla Tomljanovic in straight sets, 6-2 and 6-4, earlier in the afternoon, Saturday at 12pm PST.

Pliskova was dominant in every phase of the game, particularly in the first-serve category. She won 82 percent of her first-serve points – while Tomljanovic won only 58 percent – while also saving all six of her break points.

Besides Lepchenko, the other American in the quarterfinal round was Alison Riske, but she would join Lepchenko into the semis. She took the first set of her quarterfinal match against Ukrainian Elina Svitolina but dropped a hard-fought second set, 7-5, to extend the match.

From there, Svitolina shut the lights out on Riske by a 6-1 count, using three aces in the set as well as an edge in first-serve points to her advantage.

Svitolina now has a Saturday date (4pm PST, to be exact) with Angelique Kerber, who won an absolute thriller in Friday’s nightcap over Poland’s Agnieszka Radwanska, 4-6, 6-4 and 6-4, in a match that lasted almost two-and-a-half hours.

Kerber dropped the first set and was down in both the second and third sets before rallying to win both of them, getting huge points when she needed them and responding to Radwanska’s clever ground game with some crafty shots of her own.

In the final set, Kerber trailed 4-3 but held serve to tie things up, and with the game tied at 30-30, Radwanska double-faulted to give Kerber the advantage. Kerber won the ensuing point to get a crucial serve break and take the 5-4 lead before holding serve to close out Radwanska and move on.

Kerber came away victorious despite the fact that she was beaten in two crucial statistical categories: Radwanska won 11 more points at the net while committing 32 unforced errors to Radwanska’s 28.

By Jeremy Harness

Wednesday was not considered a great day for the Americans in the Bank of the West Classic draw. Thursday, on the other hand, turned out just a bit better.

American Varvara Lepchenko fired the loudest shot of the entire tournament thus far in the second round of this tournament, being held at Stanford, as she pulled off the upset over top-seeded Caroline Wozniacki in straight sets, 6-4 and 6-2, on Thursday.

Lepchenko seized the advantage early and held onto it throughout the match by maintaining the edge in first serves, as she converted 26 of 33 (78 percent) overall. She also blasted three of her serves past Wozniacki for aces.

She added to the advantage by breaking Wozniacki’s serve four times and then took advantage of the WTA’s fifth-ranked player’s three double faults in the second set.

This was Lepchenko’s first-ever win over Wozniacki, who had won the previous four head-to-head matches, including last year in Miami that saw Wozniacki prevailing in a 6-0 and 6-1 blowout.

Lepchenko will face Mona Barthel, who herself pulled off an upset in the second round Wednesday night, shocking fellow German Andrea Petkovic in three sets, 5-7, 6-2 and 7-6.

After dropping the first set, Barthel quickly claimed the edge in the second set against the 17th-ranked WTA singles player by winning 75 percent of her first serves and was not broken a single time. Meanwhile, Barthel broke both of Petkovic’s serves in that set.

In the other matches Thursday, Angelique Kerber, the WTA’s 14th-ranked singles player, was a straight-sets winner over Ana Konjuh. The German was dominant in every category, including efficiency (Kerber had only one double fault while Konjuh committed four of them).

Kerber will face Agnieszka Radwanska, who rallied to beat Japan’s Misaki Doi, 1-6, 6-2 and 6-0, on Thursday, while Karolina Pliskova was a winner in straight sets, 7-5 and 6-2, over Kimiko Date-Krumm.

By Jeremy Harness

After the first set, it looked like a carbon copy of Madison Keys’ blowout win Monday night.

However, the match made a 180-degree turn very quickly, and Keys found herself on the wrong end of a beatdown the rest of the way, as Ajla Tomljanovic pulled off the upset of the 20-year-old American, who is ranked 17th by the WTA at press time, by a score of 1-6, 6-4 and 6-1 to move on to the semifinal round of the Bank of the West Classic held at Stanford Wednesday.

In the third and deciding set, the Croatian won 10 of her 13 first serves, and she also broke Keys’ serve three times while not being broken once herself.

The real advantage that Keys had was her serve, as she recorded nine aces to only one for Tomljanovic, but Tomljanovic kept the pressure on Keys in the final two sets and played very solid tennis to gain the upper hand.

Another American did not fare any better. Stanford product Nicole Gibbs saw her run through this tournament come to an end against Elina Svitolina, who took Gibbs down in straight sets, 6-3 and 7-6, to punch her ticket to the semifinals.

Svitolina held the advantage in first serves won, as she won 57 percent of them to Gibbs’ 40 percent. Both players were able to break the other’s serve with a good amount of regularity, but Svitolina held a slight edge in that category as well, as she was able to save half of her break points while Gibbs only saved 36 percent.

However, all was not lost on the American side, and Alison Riske made sure of that. She pulled off the upset of the tournament thus far, as she downed Spaniard Carla Suarez Navarro in straight sets, 6-4 and 6-4.

There were only two aces in the match, and both belonged to Riske, who also held the advantage in first services won, including a 70-percent clip in the second set, and that that proved to be the difference in the match, offsetting the seven double faults she committed.

By Jeremy Harness

The Bank of the West Classic has some local flavor to it, and now we know who the local product will be going up against.

Nicole Gibbs, who played her collegiate tennis at Stanford, where this tournament is being held, found out who she will be playing tomorrow night. The 22-year-old will face the sixth-seeded player in the tournament, Elina Svitolina, who dropped the first set to fellow Ukranian Kateryna Bondarenko but roared back to take the next two sets to move on to the second round.

The match was pretty much split down the middle, but the main difference was that Svitolina went the entire match without a single double fault while Bondarenko committed six of them. Meanwhile, Svitolina won 52 percent of her second serves while Bondarenko won only 36 percent of them.

In one of the earlier matches of the day, Vitalia Diatchenko won the first set, 6-3, over Ajla Tomljanovic, but she did not get a single game after that, as Tomljanovic cleaned her out in every way imaginable the rest of the way.

For starters, just as Madison Keys did in blasting Aleksandra Krunic Monday night, the Croatian won 19 of her 22 first serves to set the tone and keep the pressure on Diatchenko. She also broke all three of Diatchenko’s three serves in the third and deciding set.

The dominating finish that Tomljanovic showed should serve as good preparation for her second-round match, as her opponent is none other than Keys, who barely broke a sweat in cruising against Krunic.

However, the Americans did take a hit during the doubles portion of this event. The duo of Catherine Bellis and Jacqueline Cako gave it a good run against the second-ranked pair of Spaniards Anabel Medina Garrigues and Arantxa Parra Santonja, but they fell in straight sets, 6-4 and 7-6, despite the fact the they saved 11of their 14 break points.

By Jeremy Harness

STANFORD – The Bank of the West Classic got under way on Monday, minus the main attraction.

Serena Williams, who won this tournament for a third time last year, was forced to take herself out of this year’s event due to a bad left elbow, which she injured while practicing during the Swedish Open.

However, this could prove to be the perfect opportunity for a star in the making such as Madison Keys, who is ranked No. 18 by the WTA at press time. The 20-year-old certainly put the field on notice Monday night by overpowering Aleksandra Krunic in straight sets by a 6-3 and 6-0 count.

Keys was simply too fast and too strong for the Serbian throughout the match, and she appeared to only grow stronger as the match went along. To illustrate her dominance, Keys won 24 of her 26 first serves to go along with six aces to only one for Krunic.

“Once I got ahead, I just tried to keep the pressure on her,” said Keys, who made it to the quarterfinal round at Wimbledon as well as a semifinals at the Australian Open earlier in the season. “My first serve, overall, has been working for me.

“It hasn’t been the most consistent year, but I would say it has been the best year.”

When you also factor in that keys also broke Krunic’s serve four times, you’ve got a match that lasted less than an hour.

Andrea Petkovic, who is directly in front of Keys in the WTA rankings at No. 17, came back to down fellow German Carina Witthoeft in three sets in one of the afternoon matches.

The 27-year-old Petkovic dropped the first set to Witthoeft, 7-5, but she responded in a huge way with a dominant 6-1 second set before closing out the 20-year-old, 6-3, in the final set to move on to the quarterfinal singles round.

“I just played really bad (in the first set),” said Petkovic, who currently does not have a coach but who has reached out to German tennis legends Steffi Graf – to no avail, as Petkovic said that Graf has no desire to travel at all at this point – as well as Boris Becker, to take on a sort of a mentor role in her career. “I was just sort of relying on my (physical) stability, but I never felt like I was on top of my game.”

Petkovic made it all the way to the semifinal round of last year’s tournament before falling to Serena Williams in straight sets. However, she won’t have the chance for redemption this time around due to defending champion Williams dropping out.

To add a little local flavor to the tournament, former Stanford star Nicole Gibbs also moved on to the quarterfinals after beating Frenchwoman Caroline Garcia, 6-4 and 7-5, to win her third match of the season.

To get the upper hand, the 22-year-old Gibbs won 78 percent of her first serves during the match, including winning 82 percent in the second set, which proved to be crucial down the stretch.