Week 36 - ITF ($25K) - Noto, Japan Grass

Peter too · Tennis legend

Week 36 - ITF ($25K) - Noto, Japan Grass

Reeltime · Satellite level

Courtesy of the Noto Twitter feed, and google Translate:

"In the Piazza of the next, we have to practice a healthy soccer in the rain."

I think that means it's raining, and the OOP is still on yesterday

steven · Tennis legend

Yes, all singles matches now cancelled for today, but Emily & Lisa got on to play doubles and lost 10-8 in the match t/b

Only one relevant H2H to report - Tara lost to Inoue in straight sets (both tiebreaks) last year - seems like a good time to get revenge!

insomniacfolder · Challenger level

Sadly none of our girls were on the streamed court (court 4) today. Hopefully they will be tomorrow though if they got through.

Just a silent, static, but pretty steady, web-cam feed. Still, it would be nice to see a bit of one of them play.

Because of the angle I imagined I could see Tara in the background on Court 3 briefly, but one person-blob of pixels at that distance and resolution looks much the same as any other I suppose.

steven · Tennis legend

It doesn't sound like it has been a great day:

Mel: "tough loss having had 2 match points! fought with what i had but going to have to take some time out and get my body sorted."

Lisa: "Losing never hurts less..especially after 4 hour battles against a brick wall!!!!"

insomniacfolder · Challenger level

Yup. Very poor day had been hoping for, almost expecting, at least 3 wins. Only 1 materialised, despite some close matches.

R1: WEBLEY-SMITH, Emily (GBR) 388 lost to TANAKA, Mari (JPN) 485 6-4 1-6 1-6
R1: SOUTH, Melanie (GBR) 311 lost to IIJIMA, Kumiko (JPN) Q 504 6-2 4-6 5-7
R1: WHYBOURN, Lisa (GBR) 326 lost to WONGTEANCHAI, Varatchaya (THA) 7 282 6-7(3) 7-6(6) 4-6
R1: MOORE, Tara (GBR) 2 248 defeated INOUE, Akari (JPN) Q 827 6-4 6-1

insomniacfolder · Challenger level

The final of last weeks $25K in Tsukuba, with about 80% the same field was made up of two qualifiers ranked 389 & 401, so these events are very winnable. (I suppose you could argue that, actually, it illustrates how fearsomely competitive they are.).

Top 5 excepted (including Bally, whilst she's still officially active) - our girls never really seem to consistently match their rankings/seedings or even beat most of the players ranked below them. Occasionally something like Tara in Kazan happens, but there is no consistency, for any given single player, or the group as a whole.

I know they try hard and want to win every match, but pleasant surprises in their results are very seldom - though results against them would often read as pleasant surprises for their opponents supporters. I wonder why that is?

At least Mel acknowledges what was pretty obvious; about her conditioning, so we'll hope for a return to form after a suitable period.

Good luck to Tara for R2, and another, hopefully, deep run.

steven · Tennis legend

insomniacfolder wrote:
Yup. Very poor day had been hoping for, almost expecting, at least 3 wins. Only 1 materialised, despite some close matches.

R1: WEBLEY-SMITH, Emily (GBR) 388 lost to TANAKA, Mari (JPN) 485 6-4 1-6 1-6
R1: SOUTH, Melanie (GBR) 311 lost to IIJIMA, Kumiko (JPN) Q 504 6-2 4-6 5-7
R1: WHYBOURN, Lisa (GBR) 326 lost to WONGTEANCHAI, Varatchaya (THA) 7 282 6-7(3) 7-6(6) 4-6
R1: MOORE, Tara (GBR) 2 248 defeated INOUE, Akari (JPN) Q 827 6-4 6-1

This rather gives the lie to the notion that the Asian players are over-ranked because the Asian events are weaker ... though in recent years, that has seemed like a more valid argument on the men's side than on the women's side.

I know what you mean about consistency (or lack of it) in the post that followed. Without doing more research, it's hard to know whether this is any more true of the Brits than of players from other countries though - it may not be. Under-ranked young players who are going to end up in the top 100 (think Heather and Laura a year or two ago) and older players coming back from injuries probably account for a heck of a lot of rankings upsets over the course of a year, so older players in the 200s and 300s must regularly lose to players ranked below them.

Breaking down today's results, we get an expected win from Tara, a very good attempt to beat a higher-ranked player from Lisa, a tight loss by Mel (when she isn't completely fit and hasn't won a match against a player in the top 750 since upsetting Lucic in Birmingham in early June) to a former top 200 player who had played herself in through qualifying and a 3-set loss by Emily (also not in great form this year) to a player who won a 10K last month and beat Mel 1 & 4 last week. So, no huge shocks, much as I had hoped at least two of them would get through.

insomniacfolder · Challenger level

steven wrote:

I know what you mean about consistency (or lack of it) in the post that followed. Without doing more research, it's hard to know whether this is any more true of the Brits than of players from other countries though - it may not be.

***Warning - A Boring Technical Post follows - you have been warned ***

Yes, you're right (and Ratty would likely agree!) more data is required. So, I've started building this. Taking a full years results from all ITF & WTA tournaments including qualifying at each event. I was doing this, idly, anyway as an attempt to understand equivalency in rankings.

My hypothesis is that there is an easy ranking - one where your actual ranking is not indicative of your performance, rather the events you happen to have played in, whether by design or not.

With that data though, I will also be able to shed light on the relative performance of any nations players as a group relative to their rankings and the players they faced.

I'm doing it manually, as I can't find a reliable (or authorised ) API for the data, or even a useful source to scrape the data from.

Obviously then, it's going to take a long time to enter all the information - I've completed about 5 tournaments a day for the past week, and that's the pace I aim to keep to.

It should also be able to categorically answer the Asian rankings question for that period.

I'm aiming to be able to review the Womens Tennis year of 2012 in about March of 2013, dependent upon other sundry factors.

indiana · Tennis legend

insomniacfolder wrote:
.
My hypothesis is that there is an easy ranking - one where your actual ranking is not indicative of your performance, rather the events you happen to have played in, whether by design or not.

Sorry, I'm quite interested in all this, but having a bit of a duh moment in actually understanding this hypothesis. Could you maybe help me out ? smile

Peter too · Tennis legend

R2: MOORE, Tara (GBR) 2 248 v HISAMI, Kanae (JPN) 408

Miriambee · Futures level

indiana wrote:
insomniacfolder wrote:
.
My hypothesis is that there is an easy ranking - one where your actual ranking is not indicative of your performance, rather the events you happen to have played in, whether by design or not.

Sorry, I'm quite interested in all this, but having a bit of a duh moment in actually understanding this hypothesis. Could you maybe help me out ?

You might start a new thread in entries and rankings, it'll get lost inside a tournament thread.

Ratty · County player

insomniacfolder wrote:
Yes, you're right (and Ratty would likely agree!) more data is required. So, I've started building this. Taking a full years results from all ITF & WTA tournaments including qualifying at each event. I was doing this, idly, anyway as an attempt to understand equivalency in rankings.

Ooh, I can hardly wait ...

Although, having run a one-man campaign for several years against the regrettably frequent comments like "Brits usually lose 3-set matches" and "we can't turn top juniors into top adults" ...

... I know that all attempts at persuasion are doomed to failure. Our fellow-posters will either wilfully misunderstand, or simply ignore, whatever evidence you show them.

smile

SMC1809 · All-time great

Ratty wrote:
... I know that all attempts at persuasion are doomed to failure. Our fellow-posters will either wilfully misunderstand, or simply ignore, whatever evidence you show them.

Now that's a wild claim. Where's your proof of that statement?? wink

kundalini · Specialist Reporter + Intermediate Club Player

insomniacfolder wrote:
Yup. Very poor day had been hoping for, almost expecting, at least 3 wins. Only 1 materialised, despite some close matches.

R1: WEBLEY-SMITH, Emily (GBR) 388 lost to TANAKA, Mari (JPN) 485 6-4 1-6 1-6
R1: SOUTH, Melanie (GBR) 311 lost to IIJIMA, Kumiko (JPN) Q 504 6-2 4-6 5-7
R1: WHYBOURN, Lisa (GBR) 326 lost to WONGTEANCHAI, Varatchaya (THA) 7 282 6-7(3) 7-6(6) 4-6
R1: MOORE, Tara (GBR) 2 248 defeated INOUE, Akari (JPN) Q 827 6-4 6-1

EWS (3.48) lost to MT (3.61)

MS (7.40) lost to KI (5.36)

LW (6.77) lost to VW (8.91)

TM (13.76) defeated AI (2.00)

Figures in brackets are points per tournament entered over last 52 weeks. I imagine if you factor in form and home/away then 1 win out of 4 isn't that surprising.