Tropicana British Tour - Tipton 2007.

tennisbrain · Club Coach

Tropicana British Tour - Tipton 2007.

johnnylad · Tennis legend

Hillyer bt Armstong 6-2 6-1

Sheddie · administrator

Just as predicted

Wish they'd offer some odds on this british tour events

Sheddie · administrator

The Panda Bear wrote:
Have you gone mad?? No, not yet

What good is such stuff going to be to someone who has the results of a future top 100 player? She needs to get her Junior ranking up as soon as possible as she skipped a year for no reason at all.

Most girls in the Junior top 300 can whip this field.

Lol, Arks it's far to early to say that Jess has the makings of a future top 100 player...I'm sure jamatthews and LTA guys would agree with me. Even the likes of Bally and Anne, probably the two most naturally gifted GB players since the golden spell in the 1980s, haven't been higher than top 120. OK, Jess' results so far have been phenomenal, to win Orange Bowl and be able to compete with players ranked 900ish at just 12, I'm a massive supporter. Given what she's achieved so far, I'd be surprised if she didn't make top 500 but it's too early atm to look much beyond that, as you have to take game style into account..you can't go purely by facts. You have to see how her game develops over the next few years, atm she's predominantly a counter-puncher but she's going to need to develop some big weapons to go far in the womens game as so many players right through the rankings can blow a player off the court.

You can tell that a player like Laura Slater (who's 15) has the potential to go far on the women's circuit as she's got a really big game, very powerful hitter - good serve and forehand, not afraid to come forward....obviously needs a lot of fine-tuning but she has the game to go places. You might not have been able to tell that when she was 12.

The experience of playing someone like Deb Armstrong would have benefitted her more than playing a G5 imo...also junior events don't have the same intensity as British tour and senior circuit where prize money is at stake !

I doubt that most girls in junior top 300 would whip this field, would probably take top 75 juniors to beat Deb and Tash.

Sheddie · administrator

tennisbrain wrote:

oh sorry for late reply sheddie.
yes tasha hillyier is strong and rather deceptive i think. she is solid off both wings and constructs the points well. no HUGE SHOT but her forehand is pretty usefull. i think she is one of those players that will be steady in the rankings allways plays alright never awfull. on a good day she could cause some seriouse upsets but not a huge prospect for future, will depend on how hard she trains and wat she does in comps over next few years
good luck to her........

No worries, thanks for the info...interesting to read. I hear Tasha is a good athlete too, what would you say ?

Yeah I doubt she's a top 300 prospect, maybe top 500 though who knows, she's improved a lot over the past 6 months according to Nigel Sears. I think she needs to play some more 10Ks, she must have saved up a bit to maybe play a few tourneys abroad with all this British tour success

Salmon · Tennis legend

David, are you aware that Armstrong has played four Junior tournaments this year?

Here are the players she lost to -

Lara Meccico - 171 - 26 36.
Jessica Jackson - 350 - 36 06.
Xenia Knoll - 1444 - 46 16. Knoll is a 1992 girl and hence slightly underranked.
Jodie Williams - 1832 - 46 62.

Enough said!

I was speaking of Jennifer there and not Jessica.

I am not saying that she will be a top 100 player. It would be terribly dumb of me to say something like that without seeing her play. But she definitely has the results to get there.

To say that it will take a top 75 Junior to beat Tash or Deb is ridiculous, I must say. Hillyer is yet to go past the last eight stage of a 10K. Look at someone like Nina Pantic, who has a 10K title but isn't good enough to win two rounds at a big Junior competition.

Sheddie · administrator

Yeah I am aware of those results, I don't really go by the junior results too much tbh, it's the women's tour which shows what they're really made of. Fitzpatrick has a dire junior record but she's made three 10K finals and is regarded by a lot of experts as a player who can go places in the women's game.

Regarding the Jess Jackson loss...I'm not surprised at that, Jackson's junior and womens rankings belie her talent, from what I saw at Sutton she's at least 500-600 places better than her current women's ranking.

Armstrong is a flair player with wonderful timing, I think she can go a lot higher but she has yet to work out how to get the best out of her game...she needs to become stronger and be more aggressive.

With Nina Pantic, she evidently hasn't bothered to play much junior tennis and has concentrated mainly on the womens game (something I think our players should do more

)...therefore her junior ranking can be pretty much ignored..she's not the average top 300 junior. With a ranking of 500ish in the womens game, she'd beat a lot of top 100 juniors.

I agree that the major junior tournaments like latter rounds in slams (quarter-finals onwards) and GAs are more equivalent to 25K level. However, G5s are a long, long way below that and to say that most players in a G5 field would whip British tour players is a bit ridiculous.

What I said about Jess, applies to Jen too

Salmon · Tennis legend

Sheddie wrote:

With Nina Pantic, she evidently hasn't bothered to play much junior tennis and has concentrated mainly on the womens game (something I think our players should do more )

Like we have been doing for quite some time now and hence have six top 100 players?

And those dumb Russians make their 13 year olds play tennis and can't produce a decent player, isn't it?

Sheddie · administrator

erm....?? we have 6 top 100 players in the junior game, I was saying that I feel British juniors need to concentrate more on the senior tour from an earlier age...this is done on the womens side - the likes of the Naomis, the Jades, Yasmin and Annabel Bann have played a lot of womens events and so are used to competing at that level and have womens rankings. However, the British boys definately need to play more futures - we often leave it too late, till they're 18 and have finished their junior time...then they get a shock as there's a heck of a difference between the junior tour and the intensity of the men's tour where battle-hardened pros scrap for every single point. Imo guys like Dyce and Rice who are in their final year on the junior tour, should pretty much quit juniors now apart from the slams and concentrate on futures. Dyce who's only played a handful of 10 and 15Ks, says he isn't going to play futures till after Wimbledon which I just don't understand....even Evans should play more futures than he does. Cox is the one who gets the balance right imo.

I don't get the Russian reference ?

Players like Sharapova, Vaidisova, Ivanovic started competing on the womens tour at the age of 13-14 and as a result were top 100 by 15-16.

Salmon · Tennis legend

Yes, British Juniors need to concentrate on the senior tour from a young age and that's precisely what they don't do.

British Tour doesn't classify as senior tennis. Senior tennis doesn't mean playing against ANYONE who is older than 18. It's playing at international level, which Yasmin and Bann don't do.

Sharapova and Vaidisova were playing Juniors full time from a young age, by the way.

I agree with you on the Cox point. The reason I love players like Cox and Tara Moore is because they are prepared to test themselves all the time. Cox is never scared of his opponents and has been playing Futures qualies from the age of 14. Even though he needs to work a lot on his body, I think that he has what it takes to play Tour tennis full time. And Tara is doing things just the way it should be done.