Lost 7-5 4-6 6-3 (one break) good start I'd say considering only 4 days of training since last year n she was 400...happy. Good match

R1: SOUTH, Melanie (GBR) 273 v (Q) MUELLER, Alexandra (USA) 405

A good chance for Mel, as Mueller hasn't won a main draw match since last autumn (but did have a good win over Beatrice Capra in Midland qualifying and pushed Heather in Toronto last year). They play first match tomorrow

Oh dear, that could well be Mel outside the top 300 in this coming Monday's rankings.

Of her total of 170 points, 132 will actually come from 9 Australasian tournaments she played in from September to December last year.

She has only 13 points to defend before the Down Under points start coming off in September, so hopefully in that time she can start gathering some points and get her ranking back moving back in an upwards direction, but she does need to rediscover some form.

Actually of our current 8 girls ( incl Jo Konta ) in the 200s in the rankings, Jo will definitely drop well out of the top 300 on Monday since her Raleigh 50K title points come of, dropping her to 131 points.  And Lisa will drop to 175 points on Monday and Cav 175 points the following week, which is also quite tight for staying within the top 300.

Cav of course has retired and will definitely fall out the top 300 in the next couple of months and Lisa will have 50 points to defend come Wimbledon from her 2 qualifying wins last year so wants to be gathering points soon or get at least one Wimbledon qualifying win again.

Our other four in the 200s are all thankfully clearly in the top 250 ( Katie and Laura ) or severely threatening the top 250 ( Emily and Naomi B ).

Kind of doesn't look good re the top 300 contingent, but I guess Emily has come in fairly spectacularly in the last few weeks so kinda replaces Mel.  Lisa has never been well within the top 300, Cav is of course retired and Jo err isn't really British anyway ( yet ).  But I still liked to see that solid batch in the 200s.

-- Edited by indiana on Wednesday 11th of May 2011 09:47:37 PM

What's worse about that loss is that MLDB lost too, so she'd have played a qualifier in R2.

True re Jo, but cynics would say the rankings slide from her this month is solid evidence that she's about to become British very soon ...

Hopefully she at least won't suffer the same fate as Andrew Gregory, who was in the top 1000 when he switched from AUS to GB and then failed to pick up another ranking point before dropping out of the rankings a few weeks ago.