thought i would start a topic for people to question players decisions on competitions and other things....... considering everyone writes about it.
for example i was rather surprised to see anne doing so many 25k and no one is doing the 100k next week in italy when so many brits would get in to it!!!
I was looking at the draw for the Tier IV in Fes, Morocco that starts next week and women as low as 681 (Brie Whitehead) were in the qualifying draw!
I realise that red clay is not the surface of choice for most of our girls but with Anna Smith and Anna Fitzpatrick both playing on clay this week in Turkey and both inside the top 600 - surely one of them could have taken advantage of this opportunity to potentially qualify. The highest girl in qualifying is 140 so it would be tough, but it could have been valuable experience.
the problem for ther players is that they have to decide their itinery in advance and have to commit to tournaments they've entered.
as a general rule I tihnk you're right and they should defonitely keep an eye out for the slightly lower WTA tournaments they'd have a chance of qualifying in!
but the points are so low in them now. there are alot more points available in 25s and 50s. I agree that it would probably be more worthwhile to gain experience but they would have to sacrifice points to do it. they all seem to decide to go for the points to get the ranking. If they are not realisticly going to qualify and win matches in the main draw can you blame them?
Hmm I guess defeat in qualifying for a WTA event might knock their confidence. And as you say points is what drives them and theoretically it is easier to rack up points at 25K/50K level, yet it just frustrates me to see spaces in qualifying for lower WTA events go to girls who can barely win a game, when one of our girls could have made better use of it.
I was really pleased when Anne decided to play a string of asian hardcourt events last autumn - unfortunately she lost in the 1st round of all of them, yet I was glad to see her out there taking full advantage of her ranking.
well its only after you get to a certain wta world ranking that you can actually enter those. not anyone can enter it you certainly cant when your arond the 700 mark
32 qualifying and people who a re not ranked have direct entry. you would get a point from just turning up. but sadly no brits, only thing i can say is its grass season coming up is that the reason but its on HARD
