Week 20 - Roland Garros women's qualifying 2011

Maza1987 · Challenger level

RE: Week 20 - Roland Garros women's qualifying 2011

murray_2k9 · Challenger qualifying

If Heather doesnt win she will still have a shot at LL should one open up, but hopefully that wont be necessary. 1st seed and 3rd seed in FQR, so only 2 ahead of her.

tony_orient · ATP qualifying

indiana wrote:
tony_orient wrote:
I'm fairly confident of Heather qualifying now, though if Voegele can reproduce her form of last year it will be tough.

What would the chances be of a lucky loser spot for Heather if she doesn't win tomorrow? I think it has something to do with ranking of players who lose in the final qual round but I don't know the details.

I just lean to Heather qualifying, but I do think she will have to be at least near her best.
If she didn't win, she would be in the shake up for LL. In Grand Slams it is a random draw of the top 4 ranked players who lose in the FQR for the order in which they would enter the main draw. Two of the top five qualifying seeds are already out, so Heather as 6th seed would certainly be one of the top 4 ranked FQR losers if the worst came to the worst. However with just one wihdrawal she would just have a 25% chance of getting in.

Thanks for answering my question.

Obviously we don't want to rely on the LL spot but nice to know there's a chance just in case

indiana · Tennis legend

Julia Carrot wrote:
Was absolutely confident having seen Voegele play once, but then I checked her clay form and she took Serena to a tiebreak in the 1st round here last year !! HELP (Sorry if someone else has already mentioned that)

I actually do tend to agree with RBBOT that Voegele doesn't appear to have any particular affinity to clay. Results ( good and bad ) seem to spread fairly evenly over different surfaces. It would be more if she played close to her best level and Heather didn't that would worry me.

Maybe that Serena first round first set tiebreaker was just one of these early Grand Slam not really with it matches that many top players and certainly the Williams sisters occasionally have.

Maza1987 · Challenger level

Excited about the possibility of Heather breaking an almost 3 decade FO quali drought tomorrow. ;)

steven · Tennis legend

DavidC wrote:
We really need Heather to qualify, and get rid of one of the many embarrassing records in British tennis. The last qualifier I think was Kate Brasher in 1983 (though we have had Lucky Losers, such as Katie O'Brien in 2009).

To avoid the need to find and check through nearly 3 decades of drawsheets on ITF just to make sure, do you have an independent source for this? I did a search for kate brasher roland garros 1983 and the first thing it came up with is one of my posts from 2009 on AM.com (post 85 on http://andy.murraytennisforums.com/showthread.php?24203-Brits-etc-in-Roland-Garros-Qualifying/page3), which as independent corroboration goes doesn't really work LOL with the posts on here further down the list.

I've got a note on file saying that Kate was the last Brit to qualify and I vaguely remember checking the drawsheets at the time (on ITF, it's a case of guessing who might have played that year then finding a link to the draw on their activity history - very tedious!) but stupidly I didn't make a note about how I checked or whether I got corroboration from someone else.

In fact (from the same 2009 research), Katie was the first Brit to get into the main draw at RG after playing qualifying (i.e. as a Q or LL) since 1988 (when Clare Wood got in as a lucky loser) and it was also the first time for 17 years that we had more than two women in the main draw. It was Elena who missed out that year (though like Katie, she was one of the four highest-ranked FQR losers) - Anne and Mel (!) were the DAs.

steven · Tennis legend

Update - I'm pretty confident 1983 is correct - just found a list I made of Brits who got into slam main draws without WCs from 1992 and I've checked 1984-1991 on ITF.

1983 was also notable for British women's tennis for other reasons - our current top two women were born a few weeks after Kate Brasher (whose mother Shirley actually won the title at RG in 1957) won her FQR match and Jo Durie reached the RG semis that year, helping her to be the last British woman to finish a year in the WTA top 10.

steven · Tennis legend

Wozniak is 7-5 *5-3 up in the match before Heather's.

Maza1987 · Challenger level

heather on in 15 mins.
let's go!

Smidster · Challenger level

Here we go..

Heather wins first game after saving 2 BP's

Smidster · Challenger level

Voegele holds to 15

Hev 1*-1

Smidster · Challenger level

Voegele breaks to 30

Hev 1-2*

Smidster · Challenger level

Voegele Holds to 30

HW 1*-3

Smidster · Challenger level

Watson holds to 15

HW 2-3*

Smidster · Challenger level

Watson breaks to love

HW 3*-3