Think it's about time Amanda started pushing back up the rankings. She sorta stopped a little bit at the end of the year. Points to defend in the first half... KEEP GOING AMANDA!
As i've said before, Garbine is extremely talented and Spain's best Junior hope I think. She even beat MJMS in the Spanish Nationals in the off-season. To be honest she really needs to get out of the 10ks.
And Amanda has played her about 4 times in the last 4 months. Awful luck.
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Anne Keothavong - Heather Watson - Naomi Cavaday - Laura Robson - Elena Baltacha - Everyone else!
Yes, Tutu, Gabrine certainly seems a real player to watch for the future, and as is the nature of many a junior at that age ( turned 16 in October ) her ranking is fairly meaningless. Thanks for helping contextualise what maybe seemed on the face of it simply a very bad defeat.
I see that she lost in a Turkey 10K final to Mandy in May when Mandy was in decent form, two 7-5 sets when still well short of her 16th birthday. She subsequently had a further win and loss to Mandy later in 2009. She finished the year with a 10K title in Spain. I see in that tournament she beat the no 1 seeded WR 308 in the first round, the previous week having served out bakery products to the no 1 seeded WR 212 also in the first round ( lost in QF to WR 630 such is the unpredictability of youth )
So bearing in mind all that, Mandy's latter 2009 form and Gabrine's very likely further off season development, and the result is probably no great surprise. In fact having read it all, in retrospect I would have been surprised if Mandy had won.
When to move up to 25Ks etc is always a judgement call, and can apparently go wrong at times, but it certainly looks like her future sooner rather than later.
-- Edited by indiana on Thursday 4th of February 2010 10:44:38 PM
Garbine cruised into the final, underlining her potential, and suggesting that Amanda probably played reasonably well in her defeat, but that the Spaniard is a class above her at the moment.
Garbine cruised into the final, underlining her potential, and suggesting that Amanda probably played reasonably well in her defeat, but that the Spaniard is a class above her at the moment.
I don't know how you can say that Mandy probably played reasonably well in defeat when only winning 3 games. Given that Mandy was the number 3 seed and it was the Spaniard's girl easiest match on the way to the final suggests to me that it was anything other than a reasonable performance.