Close! (well, until the final tiebreak anyway)

Q1: WEBLEY-SMITH, Emily (GBR) 7 416 beat ONISHI, Kaori (JPN) 570 by 6-4 5-7 7-6(0)

Q2: WEBLEY-SMITH, Emily (GBR) 7 416 v SAWAYANAGI, Riko (JPN) WR 648 (CH 550 last May when she was 17)

Oh dear ...

Q2: WEBLEY-SMITH, Emily (GBR) 7 416 lost to SAWAYANAGI, Riko (JPN) WR 648 by 1 & 0

I imagine there must be more to that result than meets the eye. Emily was the runner-up here 2 years ago so I assumed the conditions suited her.

Jaggy1876 wrote:

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She doesn't seem to be beat anyone in the top 500. She's clocking up the air miles with 0 points. Will need a couple of wins in south Africa to make some of it worthwhile.

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Bad result today - like Steven I suspect there is additional context to this.

Here is a sample of Emily's results so far this season:

Event	Round	Result	Opponent	Ranked
Dijon	R32	WIN	Charlene Seatun	399
Dijon	R16	WIN	Irina Ramialison	472
Sunderland	R32	WIN	Naomi Broady	355
Launceston	R32	WIN	Akiko Omae	278

I make it that Emily has played 22 matches in singles this year.

So, actually, almost 20% (18.2%) of all her results in this calendar year seem to have been wins against the top 500.

No doubt she hopes and intends to do even better in coming tournaments - hoping that there is no lasting damge from today.

Let's not shift the goalposts. The assertion was: "She doesn't seem to be beat anyone in the top 500."

Not: "Her form is the form of a 500 plus ranked player"

I merely stated the facts that showed the original statement to be false

Just an easy way to get across the fact that for a player ranked 436, looking at matches against top 270 players doesn't tell you much (unless they are winning quite a few of them, in which case they are probably under-ranked or very inconsistent) just as looking at matches against players outside the top 600 doesn't tell you much unless the record is really terrible - it's the record against players who are nearby in the rankings you need to home in on before drawing any conclusions.

Sad we may be (speaking for myself, obviously ) but the comments sections under tennis stories on most UK press & TV websites already cater extremely well for people who like to make sweeping "this player is rubbish"-type generalisations without looking at any facts, so we've had to find a different niche.

Anyway, I can see what you were driving at with your initial post, she's not in great form at the moment, but if you say stuff like that here, you have to take the risk that people might try to check whether you're right or not and might reply with boring numbers/facts if they disagree.

Doubles
R1: Emily WEBLEY-SMITH/Ksenia LYKINA (GBR/RUS) vs. Miki MIYAMURA/Varatchaya WONGTEANCHAI (JPN/THA) [2]

No, jaggy, you still quite largely goalpost shifting ( now, suddenly it's losing to players ranked above her ) from an earlier clear remark. Your point that Emily didn't seem to beat anyone in the top 500 was patently rubbish. And is indeed the sort of sweeping statement that does annoy many tennis followers. If you are well aware of the facts ( and you do seem to have a quite big long term interest in tennis ) then just almost more annoying as distinct to coming from the casual observer. I just don't like to see false impressions being put out there. Noone was attempting to put your knowledge down ( not the first time I have noticed such unnecessary defensiveness ), just your observation, which you simply got wrong as can happen, no matter how generally aware we are.

In truth the actual stats are possibly better than I would have thought, so there was I already with a partial impression.

However, many of us do like talking stats and can get it wrong. Then, such as an "Oops, got that one wrong" goes quite far here as opposed to prevaricating. I have had my share of booboos ( my quite recent attempt to analyse Andy's no 2 ranking chances up to Madrid was classic pish ! ) and even Steven has been known to make 1 or 2 ( actually loads...shhh ) of mistakes.

As Steven said, although blob showed Emily had been beating top 500 players ( in itself showing you to be wrong ), the 18% figure was fairly meaningless without context as to her opponents.

Steven's W4 L7 against all top 500 players and W4 L2 against those ranked 270 to 500 showed how far removed from reality your earlier statement was. Even if you count all 11, beating 4/11, 36%, is rather far removed from doesn't seem to beat any.

Yes, there is a discussion to be had as to Emily's general form, particularly currently, but just not let's hide the fact that you put out a sweeping very wrong suggestion in your initial post.

That has been, and I am afraid generally always will be with such stuff, looked at and shot down in flames. We are annoying around here that way LOL.