Jade Curtis

Sheddie · administrator

Jade Curtis

Andrew · Junior player

Thanks for all the information. Looking forward to seeing how she does at the Orange Bowl. I think she's by far our best hope for the future of women's tennis (not forgetting Baltacha, but i think she has a bigger future ahead of her).

Madeline · Admin:Moderator + Tennis Legend

Elena Baltacha has of course had health problems, but I have always been a little wary of her mental attitude as well. The matches I have seen - not admittedly very many - it looked at though she did not think things out too well. However, I'm no expert and don't watch ladies' tennis much, so I would be interested to know what other people think.

Good idea to start this thread about Jade. I have been reading her articles on the Beeb site.

Anybody know if she is going to be the English junior in the Aberdeen cup? (not that I can watch it! )

-- Edited by Decrepitude at 17:13, 2005-11-10

Andrew · Junior player

Decrepitude wrote:

Elena Baltacha has of course had health problems, but I have always been a little wary of her mental attitude as well. The matches I have seen - not admittedly very many - it looked at though she did not think things out too well. However, I'm no expert and don't watch ladies' tennis much, so I would be interested to know what other people think.
Good idea to start this thread about Jade. I have been reading her articles on the Beeb site.
Anybody know if she is going to be the English junior in the Aberdeen cup? (not that I can watch it! )-- Edited by Decrepitude at 17:13, 2005-11-10

She has such a great serve its a shame she's not been able to control her power. She used to train at Loughborough University, the courts were next to my halls of residence so i had chance to see her play quite a lot. (Hit a bit against her once too, but thats not a very interesting story). She has a huge talent, i just can't see her coming to terms with it.

Sheddie · administrator

Regarding Elena: Having seen her at Wimbledon these were my impressions:

Elena has punishing powerful groundstrokes from the baseline which she can really do damage with but mentally she does not have the right frame of mind to utilise those weapons. If she hadn't won the point within 3 or 4 shots, instead of keeping her opponent under pressure with more deep groundstrokes, she went for an outrageous winner which almost never came off. This resulted in her getting more and more frustrated with herself and she went for even more ridiculous shots. She seemed to lack the patience to construct a rally and too often was trying to change the direction of the ball which is extremely difficult on grass when the ball in skidding through.
She did have good returns though.

Regarding Elena's serve, if she can work on the action and get it consistent she has such amazing power that it would be one of the biggest serve's in the women's game.
The action seems a little raw and wild at times. Elena has a good wrist snap and pushes up well with her legs before bringing the racket down. However, Elena's ball toss is all over the place - either behind her or to far her left and generally not high enough. Elena needs to work on just getting the ball consistently out in front of her and at a good height. If your ball toss is not high enough it completely throws the rhythm of your serve. You will either be dragging the ball down into the net or you will be pushing up into the ball and sending it long. You should be pushing up to the height of the ball and then snapping your wrist down onto it.

She has a fantastic talent but I reckon she needs a change of coach as Jo Durie and the other guy who coaches her don't seem to have working on making the technical changes necessary for her to improve.

Drew · Nov 15, 2005

Check out the thread re the Juniors in the Aberdeen cup......have you heard any of them ?

Madeline · Admin:Moderator + Tennis Legend

Nope, but then Jade Curtis and Andrew Kennaugh (I think he still counts as a junior?) are the only ones I have heard of.

Sheddie · administrator

Sadly Jade lost 6-4, 6-4 in rd1

Sally · Grand Slam Champion

Is that in the Orange Bowl?

Sheddie · administrator

Yes

Sheddie · administrator

Shame about that defeat, Jade's done well in lower status junior events this year but she seems to be finding it a bit tough to get any success at the higher level in the juniors.

I think she probably would be better to do what Naomi Cavaday seems to be doing, and concentrate mainly on achieving success in futures and satellites and boost her senior ranking. As Andy Murray was fond of saying, "That's going to be the bread and butter of her career," and she will improve faster that way. It definately is not too big a step up for her - in June she nearly qualifed for the Wimbledon main draw by reaching the semis of the wild-card playoff, beating mainly of her higher ranked compatriots and only lost a tight match in the semis.

Incidentally, Ariel [who sponsor Tim Henman], have also agreed a deal with Jade and there's a page on their website promoting her

Sheddie · administrator

Jade has entered for the Aussie Open juniors.

I came across this very interesting article:

Jade now trains in the USA and seems to have finally got the sponsorship deal which she needs to cover her costs, after complaining to the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph about the LTA not giving her enough funding:

Last week WMN reported Jade had so little support from LTA that she was forced to leave Britain to train in the USA, where training facilities are cheaper.

The family home has been sold and her parents are living 3,000 miles apart to support her. Her mother has moved in with her grandfather and is working 60 hours a week to pay the training bills.

However, she has now secured a major sponsorship deal with a paper in the same group as WMN. She is now in talks with Youth Sport Trust re a second deal.

The Cornish starlet sais: "It's fantastic news. This is really going to help me. I'll be able to play in more tournaments, pay for better hitting partners and even get a sports psychologist to travel with me to some tournaments, which we've never been able to afford before"

"I've always said I'll become a good tennis player no matter what. Now I know I have no excuses and I'll work as hard as I can to make the most of this opportunity . It's really exciting."

Miss Curtis has been dubbed Britain's answer to Russian tennis star Maria Sharapova.

Her step-father says "Jade is so determined to be a top player that she'd live in a cardboard box if neccessary"

Montana Doug · Futures qualifying

With Naomi Cavaday too, the future could be a lot better than now. Interesting to see two good ones for the future beating older ladies already.

Montana Doug · Futures qualifying

I posted this in the other Brits section, but maybe it should be here too.

Jade won her first round Jr match 6-2, 6-2.....up next she plays the top seed Caroline Wozniacki who won in straights too. Caroline only lost four games also. Anyone fancy Jade's chances? I know nothing about about Jade or Caroline but wish Jade luck.

I wonder why Naomi C didn't play, but then I think she plays more senior events.

Sheddie · administrator

Thanks for posting the result Montana. This is the section in which to post results for Jade.

It was a great win for her as her opponent was only ranked a few places higher. Apparently both girls were very nervous at the start of the match but while Jade relaxed as the 1st set got underway, her opponent remained tense and never really found her game. Apparently both players were serving very poorly in set 1, making lots of double faults. Jade broke her opponent and then immediately made 3 double faults in a row to be broken back. Towards the end of set 2, Jade's opponent hit a serve which bounced before it reached the net !! Jade prepared for this tournament by practising at Boca Raton in Florida, to get used to the sort of heat that she'd experience in Australia.

On her 2nd round opponent, Jade said: "I know what to expect because I have played her before and she's very solid," "But I'm not frightened at the prospect and take the view I have nothing to lose."

This is going to be the last junior tournament Jade will play for a while as from now up until her 16th birthday in May, she's going to play some women's events. Jade says this is to "toughen up my game a bit." She's still going to play the French Open juniors though.

Naomi Cavaday doesn't have a high enough junior ranking to get into the main draw of the Aussie Open. This is because she hasn't played many junior events, she's taken the view of playing all of her tournaments on the women's main tour to get used to that level. So far she's had amazing success for a 16 year old and her plan definately seems to be working. At the moment, she looks an even brighter prospect than Curtis. I think that Naomi's got the right idea, plying her trade on the main tour as often the juniors can hinder a player's progress as the standard there isn't as high and the intensity isn't the same. As Tim Henman often says "She knows where the bread and butter of her career's going to be." I think it's a sensible decision for Jade to drop the juniors from now on as she might as well use that extra funding she's now got, to increase her world ranking. She's had quite a lot of success in the senior events she's played to hopefully she might break the top 500 by the end of this year ? I'd like to see a Curtis-Cavaday match. That would be very interesting