Just to provide a bit of entertainment during the offseason I thought it would be nice to get fellow posters' views on what they believe would be their top 5 performances of the season (ranked accordingly). As per Sports personality awards I have chosen my own top 10 from which to choose from. The criteria for choosing performances should not only be based upon the level of competition but also the expectation level for each player going into that tournament. In no particular order my top 10 is:(senior only)
1. Anne : Semi final Auckland WTA 2. Anne : Semi final Memphis WTA 3. Anne : Semi final Warsaw WTA 4. Bally : Qualifying for Aussie open and reaching 2nd round of main draw. 5. Bally : Winning Shrewsbury $75k. 6. Katie : Final Shrewsbury $75k. 7. Georgie : Winning Vigo $25k without dropping a set. 8. Naomi : Winning Puebla $25k without dropping a set on comeback. 9. Laura : Nearly qualifying for US open. 10. Lisa : Quarter final Barnstaple $50k.
My top 5 from this list would be in order:
1. Anne : Semi final Warsaw on clay !! 2. Bally : Aussie open 3. Naomi : Winning $25k on her comeback 4. Laura : US open performance 5. Katie : Final Shrewsbury $75k. Eventhough Bally bettered this performance Katie was completely out of form at the time and thus arguably was the better effort. It also sealed her top 100 spot.
I apologise if I haven't included anybody's personal favourites. This list does not include any junior competition so Heathers US open heriocs are not included.
I must say there has been a massive lack of responses to this thread. Thanks to RBBOT for the only reply but his suggestion wasn't included in the shortlist. Is everyone completely disinterested in this topic or is their another reason for no feedback.
I think the problem is that it's often not individual performances that are remarkable, but the consistency of performances of the likes of Katie in her early season, where she seemed to be making SFs at will. Other performances, such as Jade's win over Fuijwara from 0-6 down at Nottingham, or NC's win over Tanasugarn, are only in R1/2 but are standouts due to ranking and experience gaps.
If I had to choose from your list, I'd go for
1. Katie's Shrewsbury final, for getting her into the top 100 against popular opinion! 2. Anne's Warsaw semi. 3. Naomi's comeback 25k. 4. Bally's Aussie Open. 5. Lisa's Barnstaple QF, for signalling the emergence of someone who could consistently beat higher-ranked players - something of a rarity!
Thanks jb for your participation and yes individual match performances are worthy of praise but for the purpose of this thread I decided to only look at complete tournament performances . Individual performances also rely heavily on how your opponent is playing and so are very often to assess especially if you haven't watched the match live.
