Week 2 - $25K Pingguo, China hard

indiana · Tennis legend

RE: Week 2 - $25K Pingguo, China hard

wolf · Tennis legend

It seems playing the top seed seemed to take the pressure off Tara, you didn't see that coming after her struggles of late.

philwrig · Hall of fame

Great from Tara but I always say when a player appears to get a stunning result we need to see further evidence to confirm some real improvement. It is possible her opponent had an off day.
As for Naomi she is clearly not enjoying this Chinese trip performing at a level well below that of Mexico. Hopefully she can improve over the course of the week and Tara can backup this great victory.

Mervatron · Masters Series Champion

Or the level of player in these events is higher regardless of ranking?

Grea stuff from Tara and Naomi. Hopefully Tara can back up this big win

indiana · Tennis legend

philwrig wrote:

Great from Tara but I always say when a player appears to get a stunning result we need to see further evidence to confirm some real improvement. It is possible her opponent had an off day.
As for Naomi she is clearly not enjoying this Chinese trip performing at a level well below that of Mexico. Hopefully she can improve over the course of the week and Tara can backup this great victory.

philwrig, while I think you are right to caution a bit about Tara, at the same time I'd like to see a little more evidence before yourself saying that Naomi is clearly not enjoying her trip to China and performing at a level well below that of Mexico. It may be that she is playing not quite as well as then, but I do think you sometimes lean too far towards hyperbole.

So far, she has played 3 matches :

1) Beat Julia Cohen, a player ranked just outside the top 200, by 3 - 6 6 - 3 6 -4, still a decent performance if not as clearly as her 6 -3 6 -3 performance against the same player in Mexico.

2) Lost to Alexsandar Krunic 7 - 5 6 - 0, which you were pretty incredulous about at the time, although someone else said at the time and not in hindsight that Krunic had great potential amd Naomi shouldn't be over-concerned, and others of us said you couldn't be sure how much top juniors might progress suddenly. Anyway as we now know, Krunic just went and won the whole thing ( a $50K ) and shot up over 200 places in the rankings.

3) Her first round here, not as clear as I would have expected, but you can have unexpectedly good play by qualifiers. In both Naomi's and Tara's match who knows how much was really good play by the qualifier and how much the supposedly much better player was off her best game.

-- Edited by indiana on Wednesday 13th of January 2010 03:47:55 PM

philwrig · Hall of fame

indiana wrote:

philwrig wrote:

Great from Tara but I always say when a player appears to get a stunning result we need to see further evidence to confirm some real improvement. It is possible her opponent had an off day.
As for Naomi she is clearly not enjoying this Chinese trip performing at a level well below that of Mexico. Hopefully she can improve over the course of the week and Tara can backup this great victory.

philwrig, while I think you are right to caution a bit about Tara, at the same time I'd like to see a little more evidence before yourself saying that Naomi is clearly not enjoying her trip to China and performing at a level well below that of Mexico. It may be that she is playing not quite as well as then, but I do think you sometimes lean too far towards hyperbole.

So far, she has played 3 matches :

1) Beat Julia Cohen, a player ranked just outside the top 200, by 3 - 6 6 - 3 6 -4, still a decent performance if not as clearly as her 6 -3 6 -3 performance against the same player in Mexico.

2) Lost to Alexsandar Krunic 7 - 5 6 - 0, which you were pretty incredulous about at the time, although someone else said at the time and not in hindsight that Krunic had great potential amd Naomi shouldn't be over-concerned, and others of us said you couldn't be sure how much top juniors might progress suddenly. Anyway as we now know, Krunic just went and won the whole thing ( a $50K ) and shot up over 200 places in the rankings.

3) Her first round here, not as clear as I would have expected, but you can have unexpectedly good play by qualifiers. In both Naomi's and Tara's match who knows how much was really good play by the qualifier and how much the supposedly much better player was off her best game.

-- Edited by indiana on Wednesday 13th of January 2010 03:47:55 PM

I know it is possible to overreact to one performance and clearly Krunic was playing far better than I gave her credit for.
I just have this instinct that she is not performing to the same level during this trip than she was in Mexico.
Only time will tell but I don't see her winning this tournament. Remember she didn't drop a set in Mexico and already she has lost a match and dropped a set in both her wins so far.

PockyTastic · Futures level

RE: Naomi's form. There is a write up about her matches on the MCTA website, they argue that the cold slow conditions at the 50K did not suit Naomi as she found it harder to dictate play especially against a great mover such as Krunic.

philwrig · Hall of fame

I suppose compared to the warm thin air conditions of Mexico this is a marked difference and dare I suggest the reason why she is struggling somewhat in comparison.

Happycynic · Pro player

My observation of Tara is that the ranking of her opponent is a poor guide to the result. She quite commonly is competitive against higher rank players, but falls to lower.... I think the higher the rank, the higher the motivation.

djlovesyou · Strong Club Player

I think Naomi did really well to win in Mexico, but in terms of 25k events, it was a super weak field.

Having said that, she did win it very comfortably, and you can't hold it against her, but it's not like she's going to scythe through fields every week. It's going to be more attritional than that, but I think she can make it.

steven · Tennis legend

Oh dear ...

L16: (Q) Tara Moore WR 619 lost to (WC) Ji Chun-Mei (CHN) WR 442 by 6-7(5) 6-4 6-4 cry

L16: (7) Naomi Broady WR 290 lost to (Q) Nigina Abduraimova (UZB) WR 553 by 7-6(5) 1-6 6-4 bleh

Mervatron · Masters Series Champion

Ah well onto the nexty event

indiana · Tennis legend

Oh disappointing news.

I have to admit rather more evidence unfortunately for philwrig's Naomi not happy in China thesis.

Hopefully she gets back to better things sooner rather than later.

RedCabbage · Club Coach

All things considered it's a great event from Tara. I would love to see her do well this year. To get to R2 from qualifying is definitely better than par and will hopefully give her the confidence to start clocking up points at $25k level.

philwrig · Hall of fame

A great week for Tara arguably back to her best form of last year but still to show that improvement which will result in a major rise up the rankings.
A little bit disappointing from Naomi but the conditions didn't suit her style of game so we shouldn't be too disappointed.