Jade Curtis

Peter too · Tennis legend

Jade Curtis

Drew · Jun 19, 2010

If its true then that is a pity...a gutsy player when I watched her...full of energy.

steven · Tennis legend

It would be sad, especially since she does still seem to be moving up.

She was getting lots of coverage as THE next big thing in British tennis a few years back.

DavidC · Tennis legend

steven wrote:
She was getting lots of coverage as THE next big thing in British tennis a few years back.

Sadly that was part of her problem. She was featured in ACE in 2003 and 2004, which may have helped her gain sponsorships but created a lot of pressure for her to fulfil expectations. Being vertically challenged it was always going to be difficult for her in the women's game, where very few players of her height get near the top. Her progress in the latter stages of her junior career was more in doubles than in singles (she was part of the effective 'little and large' combination with Jos Rae which reached the Wimbledon semis, and were unlucky not to go further), and that seemed to hold out more hope career wise than in singles.

indiana · Tennis legend

Yes, I do remember Jade being seemingly heavily hyped a number of years ago. She at one time had a slightly astonishing website with a graph of her WR progress against Andy Murray's ( well actually her junior progress against Andy's senior

) but it really made out she was the next thing. I had some impression she had a camp that were overdoing things a bit.

Jade herself seems a really committed player who gives of her best and her lack of height is really unfortunate and has must have been a real frustration in her development.

After somewhat stalling and generally falling out of the limelight she really pushed up her WR last year and I expected her to push into the top 300 this year which I felt was a perfectly reasonale expectation on what had gone before. I ultimately thought she could maybe make it inside the top 250 if she put it all together but probably not to 200.

What has gone wrong this year I do not know. She has barely won a match, indeed barely a set and there were no signs whatever from her scores of improvement. Jade is clearly much much better than she has been showing this year, and it seems she just could not bring herself to continue at that level.

Whether it is ultimately just a temporary break ( maybe much needed ) or indeed a permament retirement we shall see in time.

But I wish all the best for the future to a gutsy committed player who tried to make the best of her talents under some pressure from an early age.

-- Edited by indiana on Sunday 20th of June 2010 02:29:09 PM

Salmon · Tennis legend

Real shame - I remembered her just last week. Good luck in the future, Jade.

steven · Tennis legend

Unless the story published yesterday at http://www.thisisplymouth.co.uk/sport/Ambitious-Curtis-sets-sights-reaching-world-s-250-2010/article-2373105-detail/article.html is based on a very old interview, it suggests that reports of Jade's retirement may be a bit premature ...

indiana · Tennis legend

I'd be delighted to see Jade continuing.

But it is a rather strange interview. In truth I'd say results have been pretty awful this year compared to what Jade has shown she can do, and certainly not just down to draws.

I actually myself had her as likely to get into the top 300 this year with possibly top 250. But it would need an extraordinary impovement in form to get anywhere near there now this year.

Certainly the article does have her current 470 ranking, but yes bit strange.

She also hasn't seemed to be playing recently, but be really poor if it's an out of date interview.

-- Edited by indiana on Sunday 4th of July 2010 02:46:11 PM

Josh · Challenger level

Been having a look around and from what I can gather Jade hasn't 'given up' as such. It appears she is intending to go to a College in the States next year and in order to be elligble to compete in the NCAA events she can't play in any professional tournaments beforehand. I'm not sure when the restriction started from but would explain why she played in the Team Tennis finals last week and County Week at the moment.

SMC1809 · All-time great

Interesting tweet from Sarah Borwell.

"Head feels better,mainly because all the girls just got cleared for college!congrats olivia,ruth and jade! Wooooo.now tear it up!"

Presumably Jade Curtis, Ruth Seaborne and Olivia Smith?

Maza1987 · Challenger level

http://www.thisisplymouth.co.uk/news/Curtis-accepts-college-scholarship-America/article-2512762-detail/article.html

good luck jade.
was always going to be difficult to live up to the hype.

hopefully, when she comes outta college she will be another decent level pro for us.

The Knight · Challenger qualifying

all seems very sensible thinking from her, seems to have a very realistic idea of what she needs to do in the future

Ratty · County player

Gotta think that it's unlikely that anyone going to college is going to want to start grinding around the $10k circuit again when she graduates at the age of 24 (in Jade's case).

And I appreciate that Sarah Borwell is now presumably making a bit of extra money by advising players on college applications, but it seems seriously misleading for her to present an unreal expectation that college graduates are ever going to compete in the upper levels of the WTA Tour.

(yeah, yeah, I know that Lisa Raymond went to college, but that was like in the 1950s wasn't it?)

The Knight · Challenger qualifying

Ratty wrote:

Gotta think that it's unlikely that anyone going to college is going to want to start grinding around the $10k circuit again when she graduates at the age of 24 (in Jade's case).

And I appreciate that Sarah Borwell is now presumably making a bit of extra money by advising players on college applications, but it seems seriously misleading for her to present an unreal expectation that college graduates are ever going to compete in the upper levels of the WTA Tour.

(yeah, yeah, I know that Lisa Raymond went to college, but that was like in the 1950s wasn't it?)

I agree the college system doesn't necessarily produce world class players, especially on the women's side, but part of the reason for that is that world class juniors dont enter the college system to begin with as there's no point. I think maybe Sarah is exaggerating with "great stepping stone" but she's not trying to suggest girls like Heather and Laura apply for this

The entire point of this is for a more mid-level talent like Jade it will allow her to continue with competitive tennis throughout her early 20's and keep improving but also earn a degree to fall back on. As Sarah said, too many young players leave education and then when they fail to make it as a tennis player, they have nothing to fall back on.

johnnylad · Tennis legend

The counter argument of course is that too many Brits have their education and funding to fall back on so they don't "want" it as much as some of the players who seem more capable of making it