Bally stat in the Times today - am I missing something?

steven · Tennis legend

Bally stat in the Times today - am I missing something?

SMC1809 · All-time great

You can see the rankings progression throughout the year from the players activity on the WTA site. Obviously, this doesn't cover every week, just those weeks when the player takes part in a tournament, but it does provide a good guide. In 1989 it appears that Jo peaked at WR60 (in Jan and Mar) and in 1990 at WR 53, just before the US Open.

I'm guessing the Times has just mis-interpreted your tweet.

PaulM · Tennis legend

Sounds to me like they took 50s to mean top 50 and late 80s to mean 89 and 90, but couldn't be bothered to check their statement for accuracy.

Sports journalism in the UK verges on the dreadful at times,with errors, inaccuracies, bias and sheer speculation by people who are supposed to be experts. Miistakes like this detract from otherwise well put together pieces.

indiana · Tennis legend

Whatever, it is certainly a jolly poor show by the Times.

And OEM, if you still read here and are responsible for this, give yourself a good slapping, no harder smile

I agree very much with PaulM about sports journalism with regard to many supposed facts and statistics. I follow quite a wide range of sports and just read and hear so much that I know to be blatantly wrong ( and try occasionally to help out the poor souls with emails ) that a knock-on effect is that I can't have huge confidence in the facts / stats that I am told about matters that I don't know so well and am relying on these folk to inform me correctly.

Some are genuine mistakes from usually well informed writers and broadcasters, but many, particularly on radio, are from ill informed pundits that just mouth off stuff when they really haven't much clue, and that is very poor. They should stick to more general opinions, which often they are very good at.

-- Edited by indiana on Monday 31st of October 2011 02:15:27 PM

jmjhb · Lower Club Player

I agree, it would be so much better if regular posters on this board could be the British tennis correspondents for the BBC/Times/other media. Alas.

Also, I for one am surprised that Steven hasn't been invited into the Wimbledon studio yet, I'm sure he could provide them with a stat attack or two...well, I guess there's always next year.

philwrig · Hall of fame

I don't think Anne is quite 29 yet either.
Interesting debate about who the new Fed Cup captain should be, I was also thinking about Jeremy Bates but felt that might rub Bally up the wrong way given that Nino I don't think is being considered. Claire Curran and Iain Bates seem to be the other possibilities and my favourite there would probably be Claire Curran.

PaulM · Tennis legend

We at GBTG want to start a Borwell for Fed Cup Captain campaign.

After the fiasco that was 2010, I think we need a captain with no allegiance or tie to a particular player which will allow that to cloud judgement.

So no Jezza, no Nino.

Fed Cup captain is really just a figurehead position anyway, rather than actually being a "coach" so we just need someone who commands the respect of the girls, is a good leader and a good motivator, and has enough coaching/technical ability to pick up on things during a match.

I think Sarah meets all the criteria. Or even Judy...

philwrig · Hall of fame

I think Sarah Boz would do a good job as well, but maybe next year would be a bit early, as I'm sure Sarah still wants to resume her playing career once her head injury is fully healed. Don't forget Katie either who I would put in the same category.

indiana · Tennis legend

PaulM wrote:
We at GBTG want to start a Borwell for Fed Cup Captain campaign.

After the fiasco that was 2010, I think we need a captain with no allegiance or tie to a particular player which will allow that to cloud judgement.

So no Jezza, no Nino.

Fed Cup captain is really just a figurehead position anyway, rather than actually being a "coach" so we just need someone who commands the respect of the girls, is a good leader and a good motivator, and has enough coaching/technical ability to pick up on things during a match.

I think Sarah meets all the criteria. Or even Judy...

Hmm, Nigel Sears' selections then were a source of great debate at the time, and yes most folk at the time seemed to think Katie got a raw deal, certainly from memory from one particular selection.

It didn't work out, but Sears fronted up explained his reasoning re the overall week, which I personally understood although I didn't agree with ( he was essentially looking to later in the week rather than I thought sufficiently taking care of immediate business ). I am very far from convinced that Sears was particularly effected by allegiance to a particular player then, certainly in deliberately favouring Anne over Katie to the detriment of GB's chances. Overall, I consider him to be a great loss to British Women's tennis.

I would not rule out individual players' coaches in the future for the Fed Cup.

-- Edited by indiana on Monday 31st of October 2011 05:02:17 PM

steven · Tennis legend

SMC1809 wrote:
You can see the rankings progression throughout the year from the players activity on the WTA site. Obviously, this doesn't cover every week, just those weeks when the player takes part in a tournament, but it does provide a good guide. In 1989 it appears that Jo peaked at WR60 (in Jan and Mar) and in 1990 at WR 53, just before the US Open.
I'm guessing the Times has just mis-interpreted your tweet.

Surely if that is what had happened, they wouldn't have arbitrarily mentioned Jo Durie finishing 1990 in the top 50, when I didn't say that (even in mis-interpretable form!) and it's wrong as well. All very strange.

steven · Tennis legend

jmjhb wrote:
I agree, it would be so much better if regular posters on this board could be the British tennis correspondents for the BBC/Times/other media. Alas.

Also, I for one am surprised that Steven hasn't been invited into the Wimbledon studio yet, I'm sure he could provide them with a stat attack or two...well, I guess there's always next year.

LOL as if! biggrin Anyway, without a computer to check my facts, I'd probably come up with just as many howlers as the rest of them. My 'strength' (if that's the right word) is that I tend to know when there's a stat out there to be found and where to check it out (e.g. things like "I'm sure X played Y before and it was close" or "I'm pretty sure the last time that happened was ..."), there aren't many stats that I'd be confident about putting out there purely from memory.

Btw I didn't even notice that they had aged Anne by a year in the Times article (she is actually a month younger than Bally), I guess I just skimmed over that bit because it didn't seem that important.

-- Edited by steven on Monday 31st of October 2011 05:16:35 PM

SMC1809 · All-time great

steven wrote:
SMC1809 wrote:
You can see the rankings progression throughout the year from the players activity on the WTA site. Obviously, this doesn't cover every week, just those weeks when the player takes part in a tournament, but it does provide a good guide. In 1989 it appears that Jo peaked at WR60 (in Jan and Mar) and in 1990 at WR 53, just before the US Open.
I'm guessing the Times has just mis-interpreted your tweet.
Surely if that is what had happened, they wouldn't have arbitrarily mentioned Jo Durie finishing 1990 in the top 50, when I didn't say that (even in mis-interpretable form!) and it's wrong as well. All very strange.

I think they would, given that 99.9% of their readership wouldn't be checking up on the accuracy of their stats. The fact that they even mention this stat and the reference to Jo Durie is solely down to your tweet. Shame they didn't pay attention to the "phrased very carefully" bit.

PaulM · Tennis legend

Oh I totally agree Nigel is a massive loss and was a good captain, but there is no doubt in my mind that personal allegiance clouded his judgement in putting Anne out against Mayr. He admitted it was a mistake and that he went with his heart not his head.

Obviously he was head of women's tennis so he was the right captain and a great leader, but remember that this years fed cup was supposed to be Anne and Elena for singles, and Joss replaced Laura and was initially supposed to play doubles with Anne and not Hev who she had history with.

It was only because of the injuries that Anne and Bally picked up that Hev got on court. For me the doubles pair should always have been Hev/Joss.

Just a small thing, but I think a sign of overall preference of one player perhaps unfairly.

It will be impossible to have a captain with no ties that are stronger to one/two players, but as I said above the key point is that Nigel was head of womens tennis. In the absence of such a figure, I don't think we should be using an individual team members coach as captain for a team of 4 if they don't have a more general role within the system too.

indiana · Tennis legend

Oh, I was well aware Nigel had admitted it was a mistake in putting Anne out against Mayr, or at least certainly admitted he took a gamble which didn't come off. I do not recall at all him saying that he went with his heart, not his head.

But if he indeed said the second bit fair enough, that was more of a problem ( edit : I can see no mention of such an admission in the Fed Cup thread at the time ).

Re the doubles, having had Anne and Joss as the preferred pairing doesn't seem unreasonable to me. It's a judgement call between experience and proven doubles ability over a pair with history.

-- Edited by indiana on Monday 31st of October 2011 07:17:03 PM

steven · Tennis legend

I thought the Sears/AK 2010 fiasco was pretty unforgiveable ... but then I did forgive him when he held up his hand and took responsibility for the error of judgment, which was very refreshing after years of DC captains trying to fob off all the blame for defeats on Boggo et al.

I agree that it would be good to have a Fed Cup coach who doesn't have any bias (real or perceived) towards any particular player, but the question is, does such a person exist among potential Fed Cup captains, even among the recent players who have been mentioned?!

That said, I can certainly see an argument for giving the job to a recent player with a strong character (and who had no particular axe to grind) and the time to get someone like that started would definitely be now, when we are still down in EA G1 and the media are not paying that much attention.

Of course, the big danger of appointing Sarah as captain would be that we'd find out after the tie ended that she'd bamboozled Hev and Laura into saying goodbye to the tour for a few years to go to college in the US instead ... wink

-- Edited by steven on Monday 31st of October 2011 06:44:44 PM