Naomi & Anna recovere from a break down to level the second set back up
7-6(3) 3-3*

One game away...
7-6(3) 5-3*

Naomi Broady Canuck Killer in Wimby Q's - Dubois in singles and then the pair today.

Look who's up next!

FWDQR: (WC) Naomi BROADY/Anna SMITH (GBR/GBR) 788 vs. Paula ORMAECHEA/Maria IRIGOYEN (ARG/ARG) 346

The Argentines defeated the [q2] pair in the previous round.
Naomi did beat Paula in a doubles last week in Nottingham.

I managed to sort of take a sickie and spend a whole day at Roehampton today. Wonderful weather, lots of people (especially tons of school kids after 4 o'clock or so, which was nice to see), and some great tennis.

On the British front, again, just my observations:

Naomi played very well. Caroline did not look very comfortable on the grass, and had a right face on her for all the first set (she's quite good at sulky faces). Naomi's serve was working well and she held her own in the rallies far better than I'd expected. Caro played a pretty dreadful first set TB - double faults and a couple of horrid shots. Naomi was 4-0 up, and 6-4 up. One set point was saved by Caro suddenly playing extremely well, nothing to say. The second set point was Naomi dumping a tame forehand into the net.
Caro played better in the second but N hung in there, getting broken at the end. But when the French girl came out to serve for it she played the worst game ever seen with 4 horrible unforced errors. However, she played a very good TB this time and Naomi was well beaten in the TB.
IMHO, Naomi deserved the first set and Caro the second. Shame there wasn;t a third set to really see their mettle.


Just in passing, of the first serves Naomi missed, over 90% hit the tape of the net. Consistently the same. Her first serve percentage was fine but she only needed a very small tweak in the leg push or arm extension to get that extra inch or two and she would have had an amazing first serve percentage. C's body serve caused N real problems - being rangy she gets herself all tied up in knots, and the backhand return is dodgy, because her backhand is all arm and no body or legs.
But overall, a really good show.

When I saw the beginning of Jade, I thought, brilliant, here's a British girl, at last, who looks really fit and athletic and has a good technique - Jade has excellent 'appuis' - what is the English word for when you plant your feet and drive into the ground and really get the power out of your legs ? It gives her a low centre of gravity and good stability and means that she's not rocked back by the force of the opponent's ball (unlike Naomi). She also distributes the ball well and gets a lot of pace, given her size. When Jade played at 100% intensity and effort,, it was match even. However, at 4-4 she wilted slightly. I don;t know whether it was physical (maybe she can only play at 100% for 30 mins and then gets tired) or mental but, given her style of game, she has to be able to sustain it. She also missed two sitter volleys which seemed to sap her confidence just at the crucial moment.

Went to watch Emily and Anna F's doubles. The girls were outplayed overall (no problem given the rankings), but played OK and were very fair-play. Which is more than can be said for their supporters' camp (no names but they know who they are and they're old enough to know better). I thought it was dreadful. The 'camp' encouraged the GB girls as though they were 12 year-olds and absolutely refused to clap a single point of their opponents, and even tutted and gave filthy looks to those around when we clapped the winners of the other girls.

Didn't see Naomi and Anna (got enthralled by several excellent men's matches) but was delighted they won, especially for Naomi because she deserved something, given how well above her ranking she was playing.

Thanks for another very good report, Coup Droit. I might get around to doing a quick report on day 2 later this week, but even if I do, it won't be as informative as yours!

Interesting what you say about so many of Naomi's first serve faults missing by such a small margin - I didn't notice that on Tuesdaybut wasn't really watching for it. In any case, trying to keep a close eye on two matches at once (and a not so close eye on another two!) doesn't make for good, detailed analysis.

I've always thought Jade looks like she has the most tennis player-like physique of any of the GB women - no doubt partly natural and partly through her own efforts. (in case that sentence doesn't make sense, in essence I'm agreeing with you!)

The only translation I can think of for 'appuis' in the sense you mean it is an excellent 'base' but that doesn't convey the whole meaning and surely there must be a better word. In dancing, where it is, if anything, even more important, it's often talked about as 'contact with the floor' in the sense of getting the weight on the correct foot to support the right balance all the way through the body, but that phrase probably conveys even less meaning than 'base' or 'support' would.

Maybe it's just one of those French words that conveys the exact meaning you want more succinctly than is possible in English. I've certainly come across a few of those and, to be fair to English, quite a few words where the opposite applies too! However, I'm not a translator, so if I understand exactly what a French word means in my own mind, I don't always care about whether I could translate it accurately into English or not. StirCrazy is a translator and thus does have to worry about such things, so if she's around, maybe she can come up with something better ... or maybe someone with more playing or coaching experience than me will immediately know what the usual word for it is in tennis terms.

Thanks for your report CD. Really interesting.

re Naomi. there are days when she is almost the female equivalent of Karlovic (great serve, but no game whatsoever), and others when she really plays quite well off the ground, like yesterday by the sound of it. Glad you feel the same way about her backhand - I have heard TV commentators saying that the backhand was her best shot, but I've always felt it was completely broken from a technical point of view - no legs or body; arm and wrist position all wrong; limited top spin and control; very hit and miss....glad it's not just me!! But this aside, delighted that she's playing better once more.

I'm still hoping that someone made it on Tuesday to see Mel's match (let's face it, a former top 100 player), where I believe she lost 10 or 11 games in a row, going down 2 and 0. I'd love to hear what actually happened. I have visions of Shahar Peer simply working the ball left and right, to keep Mel "moving", indispersed with drop shots, nothing more. Speed and fitness seems to be such an issue now, that surely every player on the tour is well aware of what to do. I know she won the QWC play-offs fair and square, so no arguments there, but it does seem a shame when players of the future, or on the up (like Harriet Dart, for example) miss out on gaining the valuable experience.

Just seen some of the pictures of the girls team for the USA/GB junior match at Eastbourne.....I know she's still only 15, but I was still somewhat taken aback by how tiny Maia Lumsden is. Not just height, but build as well. Must be a huge barrier to overcome.....there are successful "smaller" women players out there (Cibulkova, Putintseva for example), but they all seem to be built like pocket battleships (but in a nice way!)

Wish them luck!