Fed Cup 2013 part 2

Peter too · Tennis legend

RE: Fed Cup 2013 part 2

philwrig · Hall of fame

Before the day began both matches for me were 50/50, so both were crucial and to single out one match over the other as more important I think is not helping the situation.

I just know that the two best players by far this weekend were Laura and Paula, and if their match had been played on red clay in the UK we would have had a different result.

korriban · Challenger level

why would the result have been different on British red clay?

philwrig · Hall of fame

Home field advantage would have made a huge difference.

indiana · Tennis legend

I think I'll leave it, murray, since I've essentially made my points, and what I would say now would largely drift into semantics and different emphases and I have been upbraided, probably fairly, in the past about being too precious about different wordings / interpretations, plus I don't want to bore.

An interesting debate. Good day, all. Well, bad Fed Cup, day, bah !

indiana · Tennis legend

Oh, I can't resist, sorry, but maybe we can narrow hugely to the essential point that flows from your final paragraph.

The risk that Bally's selection posed was justified if it was considered that she was more likely to win than Jo - that has to be the fundamental truth. Essentially ( and I have never really disputed a major 3 set issue ), as RJA says, if Bally could be considered to be more likely to win in 2 sets than Jo ( or Anne ) in 3 sets.

The big risk that she would fade in a 3rd set is rendered null and void if one takes that view.

I can defintely accept with what we know ( and all we don't know ) that that could be the case. You appear to still have huge doubts.

OK, I am finished, well for tonight anyway.

korriban · Challenger level

Spectator wrote:
Not going to go into detail (most things have already been said), but realistically no one who really follows tennis (ie goes beyond the rankings numbers) thought we were favoured to win the tie once Ms Watson was out; lots of people have already pointed out that the Argentinian number one is known to be very good on clay and has beaten players far higher ranked than Ms Robson; and Mrs Murray's selections seem to me to make eminent sense.

Do hope for her own sake (must be quite frustrating) that Ms Robson can fix her errant serve, though.

Spectator. I don't agree with you on this one. Most commentators said the match was going to be too tight to call, with #1s beating #2s easily, and the #1/#1 and #2/#2 matches possibly going either way (and indeed both were lost in 3 sets, with GB having the momentum going into the final set, a game up in both matches, and 3-1 GB could easily have been the match score). Clearly with Heather in the side, this would have changed the picture.

As for Paula Ormeachea, I may be wrong, but I'm not aware that she has ever beaten a single player ranked as high as Laura is now, let alone beaten "players (more than one) far higher ranked (presumably top 20 or 30)". Apologies if I've boobed, but I think Laura is her CH scalp, which I think is my overall point and biggest disappointment.

What I agree with everyone about is that all the players will have tried their hardest, will have given their all, and will be devastated - but will be back more determined, and in some cases a little smarter and more experienced

-- Edited by korriban on Monday 22nd of April 2013 07:42:58 AM

Spectator · All-time great

Not going to go into detail (most things have already been said), but realistically no one who really follows tennis (ie goes beyond the rankings numbers) thought we were favoured to win the tie once Ms Watson was out; lots of people have already pointed out that the Argentinian number one is known to be very good on clay and has beaten players far higher ranked than Ms Robson; and Mrs Murray's selections seem to me to make eminent sense.

Do hope for her own sake (must be quite frustrating) that Ms Robson can fix her errant serve, though.

DF · Tennis legend

Agreed

PaulM · Tennis legend

There's a big difference between being disappointed for the girls, and being disappointed with them. We should all be the former, they haven't let anyone down. They fought hard, did their best, but across the weekend weren't good enough. That's sport.

steven · Tennis legend

I agree that JoKo was a bit hasty with that comment (I'm guessing she wanted to get in first to show that she wasn't too bothered before it was announced by someone else that she had been 'dropped,' which in itself is understandable) but I imagine the Argentine captain would have assumed Anne was more likely to play (as far as I could see on Twitter, most people did) so they could still have kept them guessing. Hence what I found more strange was that they announced her replacement hours before they had to. That may mean Judy wasn't that concerned about it leaking out early or maybe wires got crossed and it was announced too early, who knows.

-- Edited by steven on Monday 22nd of April 2013 02:29:19 PM

steven · Tennis legend

korriban wrote:
Spectator wrote:
Not going to go into detail (most things have already been said), but realistically no one who really follows tennis (ie goes beyond the rankings numbers) thought we were favoured to win the tie once Ms Watson was out; lots of people have already pointed out that the Argentinian number one is known to be very good on clay and has beaten players far higher ranked than Ms Robson; and Mrs Murray's selections seem to me to make eminent sense.

Do hope for her own sake (must be quite frustrating) that Ms Robson can fix her errant serve, though.
Spectator. I don't agree with you on this one. Most commentators said the match was going to be too tight to call, with #1s beating #2s easily, and the #1/#1 and #2/#2 matches possibly going either way (and indeed both were lost in 3 sets, with GB having the momentum going into the final set, a game up in both matches, and 3-1 GB could easily have been the match score). Clearly with Heather in the side, this would have changed the picture.
As for Paula Ormeachea, I may be wrong, but I'm not aware that she has ever beaten a single player ranked as high as Laura is now, let alone beaten "players (more than one) far higher ranked (presumably top 20 or 30)". Apologies if I've boobed, but I think Laura is her CH scalp, which I think is my overall point and biggest disappointment.
What I agree with everyone about is that all the players will have tried their hardest, will have given their all, and will be devastated - but will be back more determined, and in some cases a little smarter and more experienced

I also don't agree that we weren't favourites to win the tie after Heather pulled out. I thought (maybe over-optimistically!) that we were favourites for every rubber except the 2nd one on day 1 (albeit in the case of the day 2 singles rubbers, only very slight favourites), even without Heather.

Korriban mentions what for me was probably the biggest shock, i.e. that after Laura and Elena had recovered from a set down to level their matches on the 2nd day, I fully expected them (as current and former top 50 players taking on those who had never been in the top 100) to go on and win their 3rd sets - that's what much higher-ranked and/or much more experienced players tend to do, after all. With hindsight, of course, factoring in Laura's recent record in 3rd sets and Bally's lack of recent matches does make that seem over-optimistic.

Korriban is right about Laura being Ormaechea's biggest rankings scalp - before that, it was her win against former RG champ Schiavone in Bogotá, which could be seen as a much bigger win even though the Italian was only ranked 53 at the time. She also took a set off another former grand slam champion who was ranked 53 at the time - Venus at RG last year - so clearly there was always a fair chance of an upset against Laura on Ormaechea's favourite surface.

I'm sure the players and Judy feel they should have found a way to win the tie and I'm sure Heather wishes she could have been there to shore up the second singles spot, but there's nothing they can do about it now and this feels like (more than against Sweden last year, I think) a tie they will find they have learned a lot from.

They tried their very best (there's little doubt about that) and came up short this time, it wasn't nearly as big a shock as Russia losing to us in DC (so over the two ties, we're kind of up! ) and if they can generally stay healthy, there seems little doubt that they are going to break through into WG II in the next year or two.

steven · Tennis legend

Just remembered to check which of the Argentina team played in that 25K in Buenos Aires where Amanda Carreras reached the Final.

All of them except Ormaechea as it turns out. Amanda didn't play any of them but got further than all of them. Molinero lost in the semis but pushed the eventual winner Pereira much closer than Amanda did in the Final, so probably tops the Brit there. Bally's conqueror Irigoyen, however, lost in straight sets in the QFs to the player Amanda beat in straight sets in the semis.

I'm not seriously suggesting that Judy should have picked the GB no. 9 when she had much higher-ranked and much more experienced players at her disposal, but given how much trouble the Argentine clay seemed to give our team, it makes you think, doesn't it ...

korriban · Challenger level

If we're honest, Steven, Irigoyen really wasn't very good at all.

As soon as the cat was let out of the bag re Bally (was that twitter comment really thought through, JoKo), the Argentinian captain presumably selected the more consistent and fitter of her 2 possible picks - Irigoyen - with a clear strategy to keep the ball in play and let her opponent, inevitably not match-tight and not match-fit, beat herself with UEs (which happened big time), and ultimately with lack of endurance (which happened eventually and spectacularly). The Argentinian didn't have much to offer herself in attacking play (or perhaps she was simply following a plan - other take note!), but was less flaky than the more aggressive Molinaro - who may well have been picked instead if JpKo or Anne had played.

Ormaechea was a decent player, but not outstanding. The others were poor. But they deserved to win.

blob · All-time great

Until British Tennis accepts that a large part of the year is played on clay then we are always liable to have these results when the format dictates we play on that surface.

We have quite a childish, sneering, patronising attitude to it in general, myself included, calling it 'devil dust,' or similar, and making light of achievements made on the clay as though they don't count quite as much as those on real surfaces. I realise that at this point someone will inevitably ask me for exact and categorical examples of when this has happened - I don't have time to find them now using the search function, but, will if people really doubt that this is true.

Our players avoid clay virtually unless under duress. I realise the same can be said of past players from other nations and grass, and grass in general, but clay is a year round surface on every continent, every week - grass is not. Also, that line of argument is pretty redundant when the aim is to help our players perform better. The argument for Amanda Carreras is an interesting one.

Clay also teaches and instils good fundamentals and technique, especially in the modern game. It also crucially helps teach strategy, tactics, patience and court craft - all things that our players often seem markedly deficient in compared to their peers.

The ability to construct points and choice of shot in particular seemed especially questionable at times, from all our players in this tie, we seemed somewhat naïve and/or one dimensional. This though is an observation I would make of GB players in general throughout the year - game plans don't seem to have much guile or sophistication. Especially on clay we seem to play our natural any surface game and hope talent, power, or some other imponderable will see us through. It rarely does.

No doubt, on our day we could have won this tie.

I would argue though that the Argentinian #1 is in the region of top 50-60 on clay - none of our players, Heather included, are. Of course, Ormaechea is perhaps guilty of the converse argument to our players: i.e. playing too exclusively on clay.

Furthermore the flippant belittling of Irigoyen's play seems ill considered. She played some good tennis, and more appositely, comfortable on the surface, good clay court tennis. Well chosen and infrequent drop shots, considered service patterns and well worked rallies all characterised her play at times and each proved repeatedly effective.

Given that the nature of team events can find you playing crucial ties on clay, far from home support, why are we content to effectively allow the results to be decided by the roll of a dice at lengthening odds - on our day! This applies to the whole season.

37 years ago, ur second last female Grand Slam champion was at the French Open (and she recovered from a bagel in the middle set!), but where have we been since then? Almost denying the existence of roughly a third* of global tennis.

*figure is a wild guess on my part, the figure is almost immaterial, you get the point.