Week 25 - Wimbledon Singles Round 2

steven · Tennis legend

RE: Week 25 - Wimbledon Singles Round 2

kundalini · Specialist Reporter + Intermediate Club Player

indiana wrote:
Well can't say I'm even slightly disappointed with overall Laura's performance. Although, of course it would have been tremendous to win.
I think most folk know that her year has been very interrupted, I found it very encouraging, and overall pretty consistent other than a couple of poor games kundalini refers to. Maybe I'm more forgiving, but I still expect occasional lapes like that during such a match, but I suggest they are becoming less and she's staying more continually in the proper zone and that should just get better. Some of the rest of kundalini's piece seemed to be setting against expectations that to me are quite unrealistic at this stage.
As I said given a clear run of fitness, and hopefully the growing issues will be past too, get some consistent games under her belt and I am fully confident she will really consistently compete better with much higher ranked girls.
That was, in all circumstances, a very good performance. Quality and weight of shot was often very good and she generally reacted and dealt well with the well known weight of shot of Sharapova when in position. Yes, movement still needs to get quite a bit better. If yes indeed a bit better than before, it does need to come on still quite a bit, but improved fitness to train more should help there.
I must say I feel very positive about that performance.

-- Edited by indiana on Friday 24th of June 2011 03:03:13 PM

The fundamental difference between my critical assessment and the more generous views of other contributors is that I genuinely believed Laura could win that match. I watched the match against Hantuchova and last night watched some of the highlights of the match against Jankovic from last year. There was plenty of evidence from those previous matches that Laura has got enough weapons to pull off a win against a top 10 player at Wimbledon with her current game and current mobility if she can perform right at the top of her level. Obviously if she produces an average display then she has no chance.

From what I've seen, I expect Laura to be a top 5 player. Whether she will be good enough to win a slam I'm not sure. The difference between Laura's weapons and the current games of Heather, Anne and Elena is huge. I am the person who predicted Laura to finish the year as the no 1 brit; obviously got that one miles out.

indiana · Tennis legend

kundalini wrote:
indiana wrote:
Well can't say I'm even slightly disappointed with overall Laura's performance. Although, of course it would have been tremendous to win.
I think most folk know that her year has been very interrupted, I found it very encouraging, and overall pretty consistent other than a couple of poor games kundalini refers to. Maybe I'm more forgiving, but I still expect occasional lapes like that during such a match, but I suggest they are becoming less and she's staying more continually in the proper zone and that should just get better. Some of the rest of kundalini's piece seemed to be setting against expectations that to me are quite unrealistic at this stage.
As I said given a clear run of fitness, and hopefully the growing issues will be past too, get some consistent games under her belt and I am fully confident she will really consistently compete better with much higher ranked girls.
That was, in all circumstances, a very good performance. Quality and weight of shot was often very good and she generally reacted and dealt well with the well known weight of shot of Sharapova when in position. Yes, movement still needs to get quite a bit better. If yes indeed a bit better than before, it does need to come on still quite a bit, but improved fitness to train more should help there.
I must say I feel very positive about that performance.

-- Edited by indiana on Friday 24th of June 2011 03:03:13 PM
The fundamental difference between my critical assessment and the more generous views of other contributors is that I genuinely believed Laura could win that match. I watched the match against Hantuchova and last night watched some of the highlights of the match against Jankovic from last year. There was plenty of evidence from those previous matches that Laura has got enough weapons to pull off a win against a top 10 player at Wimbledon with her current game and current mobility if she can perform right at the top of her level. Obviously if she produces an average display then she has no chance.
From what I've seen, I expect Laura to be a top 5 player. Whether she will be good enough to win a slam I'm not sure. The difference between Laura's weapons and the current games of Heather, Anne and Elena is huge. I am the person who predicted Laura to finish the year as the no 1 brit; obviously got that one miles out.

Speaking for myself, I think an essential diference we have is definitely the expectation level we had.

We do appear to agree that Laura should make the top 10 / 20 ( won't argue figures or strength of feeling on that ) and that she has real weapons which will be a great help ( I have said I think she is already the best striker of a tennis ball in British women's tennis )

However, your expectations for her against Sharpova ( and presumably then some of what from my angle I found unbalanced criticism ) I find quite unrealistic. You mention performances against Hantuchova and Jankovic over the last 2 years. However, you seem to not really factor in her still general overall consistency ( or rather lack of, but getting better ), largely this year explained by haviing very interrupted match experience and also quite restricted practice and fitness work.

Yes, from these previous Wimbledons, in isolation, we may have expected her to be more ready to take a really big scalp, but to me that ignores so much more. She just isn't at that stage, in particular for me to have had any real expectation she could put it all together well enough over the course of a match against such as Sharapova. Your critique read more what one might expect of an established top 50 player, Laura is still quite still some way off that.

I think like you that Laura will go very far in the game, but I had no real expectation of her beating Sharapova. In the event, and all circumstances, I thought she played very satisfactorily, Sharapova was not at her best, especially early on, and we had the match we had.

DUSTY DICK · Club Coach

Great learning curve for Laura and deffinately has some big weapons there. I actually thought she did a lot better than I thought she would against Sharapova. I just hope she can stay injury free now for the rest of the season and stuck in at some qualies for tour events to really get going. It would seem that is preety much what she needs now. To be at the tour events getting stuck in there. She has the game to reach the top 100 by the end of the year.

Really wish Bally had won as it's Czink I believe in the next round and that would have given her a great chance of making the last 16.

Maza1987 · Challenger level

had the game on in the gym, couldnt watch it, but some of the members said laura played well. even though sharapova was apparently playing poorly in the first set. still pleased with the scoreline.

but i'm not fickle enough to get carried away in the razzmatazz of wimby. the real work will begin now, and i will be hoping for some strong challenger results as well as hopefully qualifying for some small main tour events.

DUSTY DICK · Club Coach

Absolutely. She needs to start stepping it up now. To think 12 months from now she will be over 18 and it would be good to see her in the top 100 by then. Time to grind out some results Laura.

indiana · Tennis legend

Yes, it is a pity her progress has been so held up for various reasons over the course of this year.

I agree that now she just needs to get out there, start getting results in at least some good challenger / ITF events and build the confidence and consistency in her game while rising up the rankings.

I really hope it can be a much smoother, upward path than it has been of late. Today showed so well that the talent is undimmed. It's improving these weaknesses ( and indeed strengths ), and just generally learning so much more on the job so that in the not too distant future she really can be the player many of us think she can be.

I'm not quite up on the numbers but at least having missed so much time this year she will be able to play more continuously in the second half of the year, while staying within the 17 yo age retrictions.

-- Edited by indiana on Friday 24th of June 2011 06:28:07 PM

Ratty · County player

Can't quite see the point of all this "top 10 - will she - won't she" stuff.

She's ranked 254, so that sems a pretty objective measure of how good she is. I read nothing into a plucky performance against Sharapova on a show court at Wimbledon. Just like soccer leagues are won in grinding out goalless draws at Blackburn on a boggy pitch in February, tennis careers are likely to be built on dour baseline battles in front of 2 men and a dog at a $50K in Ostrava.

Her ultimate career high will depend on how much she improves, and that is something that nobody can forecast.

And she appears (like Sharapova) to have a stiff and "unbendy" physique, which means that freedom from injury could prove an ongoing issue.

smile

djlovesyou · Strong Club Player

Are you saying that Laura Robson is probably about the 254th best female tennis player in the world at the moment?

But given what you said, I would imagine that if she had lost 1 and 0, you would have read an awful lot into it, and said it was concrete proof that she's never going to amount to anything.

-- Edited by djlovesyou on Friday 24th of June 2011 08:19:55 PM

Ratty · County player

It depends upon what you mean by "best".

You see, I think that things like: a bendy physique which makes you consistently injury free like Federer and Djokovic, the "hustling" ability which got Hewitt to No 1, and the intimidating personalities of the likes of Serena Williams and Sharapova, are all as important to a successful career as ball-striking ability.

If you adjust for the age restriction, and give her say 18 tournies rather than 13, then Laura might have a notional 280-odd points. That makes her about the 200th best player in the world. Seems reasonable to me.

tony_orient · ATP qualifying

I watched all of Laura's match today and she definitely gave a really good account of herself. With the pressure off and boosted by Wednesday's win she was always likely to play well, my only fear was that she would go behind early but once she won the long opening game she played some really good tennis.

She was never going to beat Sharapova, as Laura had to be at her best to match her and there are always going to be spells in matches where Laura dips below her best level. The main positive for me though was that she could stand toe to toe with Sharapova in the rallies, and if she can do that against Sharapova she can do that against anyone.

Hopefully this Wimbledon will be a really good springboard for Laura as after a difficult year she really needed a boost in confidence and maybe even to remind herself how well she can play. She does need to carry the form and confidence from this week into her upcoming tournaments - I don't quite agree with Ratty that a good performance against Sharapova counts for nothing, but it will count for a lot more if it is the start of a turnaround in results. Given that she is finally injury free I'm confident she will be able to to that.

tony_orient · ATP qualifying

Ratty wrote:
It depends upon what you mean by "best".
You see, I think that things like: a bendy physique which makes you consistently injury free like Federer and Djokovic, the "hustling" ability which got Hewitt to No 1, and the intimidating personalities of the likes of Serena Williams and Sharapova, are all as important to a successful career as ball-striking ability.
If you adjust for the age restriction, and give her say 18 tournies rather than 13, then Laura might have a notional 280-odd points. That makes her about the 200th best player in the world. Seems reasonable to me.

This calculation would also make Laura about the 150th best player in the world a week on Monday which is probably not unfair as Heather is around 100 and Laura needs to show a lot more consistency to be considered at the same level.

indiana · Tennis legend

Hmm, interesting adjustment to her current rankings position of WR 254 on 209 ranking points.

Of course some might have considered her post Wimbledon position of already into the top 200 at approximate WR 190 on already 304 actual points after beating the WR 77 here ( edit : as tony did smile )

Who knows what her "true" position in the women's game is, always difficult with a young player who is capable of and does beat much higher ranked players.

As has been mentioned one just hopes to see her getting an injury free time, start to string some decent results together and climb these rankings, and just generally improve her game.

She still has a long way to go, and I think I made clear in an earlier discussion that I consider her as yet a long way from having the consistency that I would be thinking she currently had very good chances against top 10 / 20 players, and thought today's performance very satisfactory.

As to folk predicting where she will reach in the rankings, I'd say I myself am like many sports followers in thinking it can be fun and interesting just to speculate how good a person or team might ultimately be, as distinct from merely following and reporting their progress on a week to week basis. Where might they ultimately reach in their sport ? It's OK, it's not compulsory to join in smile

-- Edited by indiana on Friday 24th of June 2011 09:58:37 PM

tony_orient · ATP qualifying

It looks like Laura will be playing a 100k then a 50k on clay in France for her next tournaments. I suppose she has to play on red clay occasionally but it won't give her the best chance of capitalising on her Wimbledon success. At least the 100 ranking points mean she might get into the main draws.

DUSTY DICK · Club Coach

I agree with many here that Laura was never going to beat Sharapova in all reality yesterday given the gulf in rankings and more importantly experience. But she did Sharapova something to think about in that match and made her work. Also more importantly for Laura she showed to us and herself what she is capable of doing while still to a large extent being raw talent. Hopefully she can get a decent coach to work with and get a good working relationship going (Bally and Nino for example) and start to push on in the challenger events getting wins week in, week out and climb the rankings. She has plenty of time to develop over the next few years. Looking at Heather Watson as an example. As a British tennis fan i am a huge fan of Heather and congratulate her like many here on what she has done this year. The girl has guts, determination, desire and a real fighting spirit as well as a decent game. But she seems focused on what she wants and ok she may never go on to win a slam or make the worlds top 10 but I got a great feeling she will be top 100 for a long time and playing the tour and getting everything she can out of her game. The same with Bally now. I saw her at Nottingham and could see a difference in her game. Then saw Anne k and Bally seemed a class above that day. So back to laura and if she could just start to make steady week by week progress grinding out those wins that develop you in so many ways as a player she should deffinately reach the top 100. Get 3 or 4 players there and they push each other. We have some good potential there and I truly hope laura does make it as she was good to watch yesterday.