indiana wrote:

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Well done to Tara. While folk suggested that that match was very winnable, she still had to go out and win it. Brengle may actually be tougher; but still a winnable match again.

As well as Tara's "in running" points total of 241 points for a week on Monday currently being equivalent to her CH of WR 233, with only a net 33 points due off before Wimbledon ( and all not until June ), she would be on 208 points at Wimbledon time if she didn't win another match in the meantime. 208 points is currently equivalent to WR 250. I'd suggest that if she is healthy Tara will be getting a Wimbledon MD WC !

Actually with these 241 points already and nothing to defend until June, she must be looking up the rankings. A nice round 300 points is currently equivalent to WR 200. Hmm...

As Phil says, it would be great to see her as a fixture in GS qualifying, and reallly starting with this year's French Open that should be her aim.

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 So with very little points to defend. Any additional points this week plus Sunrise next week, where she may be close to getting a seeding, her ranking should keep rising.

 I cannot see a suitable tournament for the following week for her, but she is entered into a Mexican $25K the week after ,then there is a another set of US challengers for her to enter in March.

  I can see Tara easily breaking into the top 200 at this rate.

korriban wrote:

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Tara was tweeting at 2.30am local time this morning.........

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Don't worry, I'm not trying to have a go at you (and you are making what could well be valid points, though there could be perfectly innocent explanations too - see below) but there are few things I find more irritating than people noticing when I tweet/post at odd hours

I can't imagine Tara would deliberately jeopardise her chances of going deep here after the effort it must have taken to do so well yesterday or that the other girls there with her would have deliberately tried to stop her getting enough sleep just because they were out of the tournament already. Maybe when they were all younger, but not now.

Checking back (and feeling guilty for doing so!), she only tweeted once after 2 am local, so maybe she woke up in the middle of the night and checked Twitter just to give her something to do before falling asleep again and wasn't so paranoid as to think "hold on, if I answer a tweet now then lose tomorrow, someone might notice I tweeted at 2 in the morning."

Actually, I've often wondered how many bad results are due to disturbed sleep or someone getting a bit ill (which might in turn result in disturbed sleep) - when you're staying in a different place every few days and on a (low) budget, it must be very hard to take care of yourself as well as a top player who is earning enough not to have to worry about much financially. Even for the top players, constantly changing where you are sleeping can't help, even if tennis players must to some extent get used to it.

Of course, you may be right about a Murray-style 'don't do mornings' problem, but if he got over it, she probably can too. It could even be seen as another incentive to move up the rankings, since there is at least some correlation between higher levels of tournaments and later average match times - not necessarily because the higher level tournaments have later start times but because matches tend to be spread longer throughout the day and evening than in the lower-level events, where they often just try to get them all played as early as possible.