Laurendon could be dangerous. Even though she is 24, and never been ranked inside 200, earlier this month she reached a 25K final by beating Elena Chalova (who went on to comfortably beat Laura in her next match)
Laura was losing 2-1 in the first set when proceedings were halted for a leaky roof. To resume tomorrow 11 a.m. local time when if she does get the victory she will be expected to play her 2QR later tomorrow against an opponent already through after today. I assume the leaky roof will be fixed for tomorrow as the weather forecast is for more of the wet stuff.
Absolutely hammered I'm afraid 6-1 6-1. Probably the worst performance of her professional career. She appears at a crossroads at the moment. It would be interesting to hear her own personal thoughts to see what the problem is. I wonder whether her mind is 100% focused on the tennis at the moment. Her performances at the big tournaments have been her only saving grace this year. Is she 100% happy training and playing tennis at the moment ? I'm not so sure.
Looking at the match stats only 35% of points won on 1st serve compared to 45% on second serve. That can't happen very often. Didn't convert any of her 9 break points. I suspect Laura is a confidence player who when her game is on can win streaks of games and points but it can also go the other way.
But as I have said before I accept and indeed expect inconsistency from Laura at this still very early stage oin her career
And I can imagine any things going wrong in fact or just in her mind will magnify at her still very young age to have a big effect. I do agree that she is probably very much a confidence player at the moment.
She is still very much in a learning and development phase, and has clearly shown even quite recently that she has enormous potentail when things all click.
At this stage, I think what we see when she is playing at her best is much more important than the not so good days. When she is good she is really very good for a playere of her age. I would expect her to in time to develop much more consistency and manage more often to play close to her best level.
I wonder if she should for a time aim less at 50K and get more maches at 25K and even 10K level to give her more match practice and confidence, then again at her best I do think she has the ability to compete at this level.
I do agree with some things you say here, philwrig, and I seem to remember previously about Laura. It is to me much too early to be getting too agonised or judgemental, given her age and the expected inconsistency.
I am therefore very surprised about one bit. "Crossroads" ??
-- Edited by indiana on Sunday 1st of November 2009 03:03:59 PM
I suppose I am hypercritical because my expectations are very high. I have no doubt about her playing ability the only question mark being her movement around the court but that can be improved. What I am concerned about is her unease and negative body language when in press conferences she is asked about her tennis. Talk about anything else and her eyes light up and you can't keep the smile off her face. I remember at Wimby a journalist asking her about how she was enjoying her Wimby experience this year and she could only talk about the fact as a senior she had access to a much larger dressing room. In addition she never talks about her tennis on twitter but will wax lyrical about anything else. Added to that her coach suggested that the move to the Paris academy was to avoid distractions at the NTC. It may just be a phase she is going through as a teenager which is what I meant about crossroads. It seems that the bigger the player she plays and the bigger the tournament the better she plays so she will definitely give a good account of herself in the hopman cup. The problem with underperforming in the smaller tournaments is that she needs the ranking points to move up the rankings. With her being shielded from the media we just don't know her personal thoughts with regards to some of these questions and people like myself are left to speculate and maybe my thoughts are completely wide of the mark.
On refection, maybe 10K a bit too low level, and not a lot of ranking points there ! But I was thinking maybe more matches say at 25K level and more confidence than being sometimes thumped at 50K and 100K level. But again, as we are saying she can rise to that level and maybe higher, indeed as you suggest is maybe more inspired often by bigger matches.
It's a difficult one, but I think young teenagers can make things confusing
Ultimately I think a lot in goldfish's comment about some of the matters you bring up : "typical teenage behavior"
-- Edited by indiana on Sunday 1st of November 2009 03:40:35 PM
I'll be worried if this is still happening in 1 1/2 yrs time. Untill then, not concerned.
Oh, and with regards to the twitter thing Philwrig. I don't expect too much tennis talk on there, because as Andy said, anyone who is following you already knows the obvious. Also, did you notice Heather Watson tweeted about her match losing to Tetreault in candda (50k), then the tweet was subsequently deleted a few days later. Almost as if someone had a word with her. Don't know whether this has anything to do with the new rules, but it seems more and more tennis players, and indeed sportspeople in general, are using twitter as a means of communicating other things.
