Week 29 - WTA Tier 2 - Stanford, California, USA

ForeverDelayed · Grand Slam Champion

RE: Week 29 - WTA Tier 2 - Stanford, California, USA

Salmon · Tennis legend

I wonder how well Larcher De Brito will do against Serena. Four games would be good, I guess?

She's playing unbelievably well now. Maybe she could win a small hard court tourney (Tier III or IV) later this year if she goes to Asia.

DUSTY DICK · Club Coach

Really well done to Anne to back up qualifying and then beat Mirza in round 1. 50 points in the bag, very nice. When i saw she was playing a tier 2 in quali's i kinda thought she would probably lose by the final round but so glad to be wrong. I f the mental side of things clicks into gear then maybe Anne can still go further up the rankings. Whatever happens this has been a good week of solid wins and she must be sky high in belief and confidence right now. If she plays well against Bartoli then she could win that match. It's not a bad match-up for second round of a tier 2.

kundalini · Specialist Reporter + Intermediate Club Player

ForeverDelayed wrote:

Excellent win for Anne, and it's great to see her beat top 50 players, even if Mirza has had a shocking season so far.

Bartoli next won't be easy, but it is winnable as she is overranked compared to the talent she acually has, but I'd be surprised if Anne did win that match though.

Well done to Anne for actually reaching this level and winning these matches, as I honestly didn't believe she was good enough to do so, and until this year, every time I'd seen her play she'd looked a very average player, but obviously it's all clicked for her now and she realising her potential, and has got a lot further up the rankings than I thought she ever would

Agree with much of that. I too thought Anne just didn't have the game to hurt top 100 players. Her game looked nice but lacked penetration. She seemed like the queen of 25Ks but struggled to make much of an impact at 50K level. Then this time last summer she reached a 50K final then won one the following week and here we are with her establishing herself inside the top 100.

It will be interesting to see how she does over the rest of the year. She'll probably play main tour events throughout and there is the danger of getting a run of horrible draws. But she's not that far away from being seeded at tier III and tier IV events, so a similar run to Kolkata last year is a real possibility at some point.

The difference between Mirza and Bartoli right now is that Sania is still troubled by injury, whereas Marion is down slightly on her peak form of last year but has very few losses this year to players outside the top 60.

If Anne were to get a set then I'd take that as a very encouraging sign for the rest of the season. A win would be something special.

Salmon · Tennis legend

Shows us how major a weapon confidence is.

A personal coach would be great but I hope she pays a part of the salary (as much percentage as she can afford, which obviously depends on how high profile a coach she gets).

Tutu · Club Coach

Is it true she gets a personal coach f she reaches the top 75? (bearing in mind she will be 75 as things stand)

Salmon · Tennis legend

I've never heard anything and was only going by what you said.

But I remember Katie saying that she would be getting one if she got to the top 75, so it should be the same for everyone over the age of 20, isn't it? It would be unfair if that wasn't the case!

Personally I don't like the idea much. Give the players the assistance when they can't afford it, not when they are Tour regulars and making a good 200K dollars on court alone.

Mervatron · Masters Series Champion

Great win Anne. So Happy for you.

Bartoli is winnable but its gonna be tough.

indiana · Tennis legend

Who knows how far Anee could go.

I mean the top seed is now out and the seventh seed had a struiggle to get through.

For, to quote from ITV Teletext :

Headline on page 495 : Top seed Dulko crashes out

Script on page 496, after description of Anne's win :

Michelle Larcher de Brito shocked no. 1 seed Gisela Dulko 7-5 7-6, while seventh seed Dominika Ciibulkova beat Nadia Petrova 6-4 3-6 6-3

Don't tell Serena about her demotion, but at least Nadia might take it better knowing that she wasn't the 7th seed in that match.

This has been up most of the day, and while I'd cottoned on to the Dulko error ( I'm sharp, me ! ), it's just just now I've realised quite how garbage the information is.

And I thought the BBC was bad !!!

Edit : I found an email address for the duty editor at teletext, so I have given him both the above quotes and the correct facts. I wouldn't normally ever go that far, but geez !

-- Edited by indiana at 22:55, 2008-07-16

DavidC · Tennis legend

Yes, I also noticed the Teletext gaffes, but at least the ITV Teletext covers British stories far more than the BBC does (although the Beeb were quick off the mark with Anne's win for a change) so didn't want to make a fuss.

One odd quirk is that Anne's win means that when the next rankings come out the British number 1 will be higher ranked than the German number 1 (Brit basher Sabine Lisicki) for the first time since before the Steffi Graf era.

ForeverDelayed · Grand Slam Champion

DavidC wrote:

Yes, I also noticed the Teletext gaffes, but at least the ITV Teletext covers British stories far more than the BBC does (although the Beeb were quick off the mark with Anne's win for a change) so didn't want to make a fuss.

One odd quirk is that Anne's win means that when the next rankings come out the British number 1 will be higher ranked than the German number 1 (Brit basher Sabine Lisicki) for the first time since before the Steffi Graf era.

The BBC reporting Anne's win possibly has something to do with the RSS feed they have from the WTA website, which obviously would include her win, and so them not writing a story on it when there's a link about it would look a bit stupid.

ITV teletext is usually good at covering Brits though, even if they do make some strange mistakes at times (guess the bye in the first round for Serena probably confused them)

indiana · Tennis legend

Well, at least they sorted it quickly ( the actual results page still has the wrong see nos against names, but I'll let them off )

They have changed both pages, and emailed me :

Dear Mr Goodbrand, Thank you for your e-mails. We have amended the story and the headline. Apologies for the errors. Regards, Marcus McCollum-ManDuty Editor

Peter too · Tennis legend

Anne's match is 3rd on court so it should be at a reasonable time tonight.

Salmon · Tennis legend

MLDB got the first set against Serena.

But is a break down in the second.

johnnylad · Tennis legend

Serena came back to win 4-6 6-3 6-2 but

at MLDB

-- Edited by johnnylad at 07:02, 2008-07-17