Anna S is the only female ranked lower down that I can see getting anywhere near the too 500. Anna F and Mel are spent forces. Pretty depressing for women's tennis if you take out our top 6 strength in depth wise.
I agree with you Jaggy, but unfortunately the LTA sees things rather differently
"The success of Andy Murray, Laura, Heather... and others, is a fantastic beacon... driving media coverage," says Mr Long. "We are lucky to be on the cusp of golden era of British tennis". This from a BBC interview with LTA Commercial Director Simon Long just over a month ago.
"This is a really exciting time for the women's game in this country," said Roger Draper, chief executive of the LTA.
This from a BBC interview with LTA CEO Roger Draper a few weeks ago.
Does any of this ring true to you Jaggy? Or to anyone else out there? In a world where the genuine success of one British man who works outside the LTA set-up, and 2 British women who have merely reached the top 50 at this point heralds "a golden era for British tennis" and "exciting times for the women's game", perhaps WE are all midunderstanding the situation. I wish Simon and Roger were correct, I really do, but methinks a degree of hyperbole, delusion or indeed deliberate misinformation may have crept in somewhere!
Yez, I quite agree with jaggy about Anna Smith being the only one out there just now that shows real prospects of joining ( rejoining in her case ) the top 500 in the short to medium term, and making up that chasm in rankings after Jade Windley ( GB no 13 and WR 442 ). I said as much a couple of weeks ago.
It is a pity about Eleanor Dean. All the indications before her injuries were that she would easily break into the top 500 and go higher. I really hope she can still come through.
Others such as Lucy Brwon and Katy Dunne I have doubts about. Harriet Dart seems to have something about her to at least be top 500 in time and the USA uni girls might provide one or two that at least reach that level.
For any other prospects of good top 500 players, I think we will have to wait and see how some of the younger junior ITF players develop.
Women's tennis is certainly looking much better overall than the very low basepoint of about 10 years ago, and of course two young stars have emerged in Heather and Laura.
But indeed, still much to be done, and more generally Draper and Long deserve to be lampooned for their OTT ( indeed sometimes just weird ) comments, often of a very selective nature
How many games would the world #392 get off an Azarenka or a Bartoli or even a Martic? Not many, I'd suggest. The gap is that big.
So if the world #392 is able to thrash Laura Deigman by 1 and 0 today, where does that leave Sabrina B? Sabrina lost to Laura yesterday by 0 and 3 - itself a complete thrashing. At #18, Sabrina is ranked well inside the GB top 25 table, which is scary.
How many GB players entered the qualifiers for this small $10k GB tournament, and how many were in the MD either automatically or as WCs? By the way, the answer is 34!!! I hope it doesn't happen, but it is entirely possible that we won't have a single player in the QFs.
Can someone do a fact-based memo to Roger and Simon at the LTA please!
Come on Danielle, Lucy and Anna - your country needs you!
-- Edited by korriban on Thursday 7th of March 2013 01:52:04 PM