thefollower wrote:

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All of this on a surface wich surely he wouldnt consider his best one!

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You mean the only surface that he has played on this year?

No one is 'bashing' Golding. We were saying that we expected him to win more easily. Considering he is ranked about 500 (FIVE HUNDRED) places higher in the world rankings. (NB Rankings count all matches, including windy and rainy ones - and why should the weather have hindered Golding but not his opponent ? Maybe the Belgian would also have played ten times better if it'd been sunny).
So good for him that he won. But it's hardly cause for celebration.
And, yes, he's had a few months out with injury. But Penetta was out for 6 months and is now, unfortunately, romping through her first round at Wimbledon.
And, fine, if he wishes to choose clay all year but I'm sure if he'd have been ranked 230th in the world, as he should well have been, and been given a WC for WImbledon he'd be here and playing on grass.

RJA wrote:

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But he lost the second set 6-3

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And the third by 2-6.

L16:  Oli Golding WR 529 vs (8) Joris de Loore (BEL) WR 509

-- Edited by Stircrazy on Wednesday 26th of June 2013 12:43:19 PM

But he lost the second set 6-3

RJA wrote:

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I don't think it is unreasonable for us to be disappointed with the pace of Oli's progress. He finished his junior career at a very similar level to Jiri Vesely and to be honest I thought Golding was the the more talented of the two but look at how their career's have developed since then. Golding is still struggling to win matches at futures level while Vesely is winning challengers and is close to breaking the top 100

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I think it may be a bit unfair to make this comparison. 

I presume you're comparing Oli and Jiri on the basis that they both won GS in the same year, and so should be somehow on the same trajectory into the transition to the senior game.

So, let's look at the other Junior GS Champions that year: Bjorn Fratangelo (French Open), Luke Saville (Australian Open)

Fratangelo: WR 338 =CH

Saville: WR349 CH320

Vesely: WR109 CH106

Golding: WR529 CH418

Now, we want Oli to be the best, and so comparing him to Vesely seems fair, as if Oli were the best he'd be up at the same level as Jiri, considering they achieved the same thing as Juniors in a given single year (one 1 GS).

But looking at the progress of even just the 4 winners that year, shows that Jiri is not the norm, he is an anomaly, an outlier.

Compared to the others, Oli's progress is disappointing, but far less so than if your only yardstick is the exception - Jiri. He is closer to being on pace with the general progression of a 2011 GS winning junior than is often assumed.

Here's a graph I made quickly (and probably badly) of the 4 players pro rankings through history

 

Oli's recent dip in form really exaggerates the gap away from the general similarities in progression.

Widening the scope further to show all 2011 GS finalists or 2011 top 10 players might show the true development pattern for such players. In all cases, I think Jiri is the exception, not the rule.

It's fine to want Oli to be the best and measure him against Jiri, but look at the rest of his peers in 2011 and no one matches up to Jiri.

Why can't one of ours be the best for once? Well, he's not right now. But he is on course with those who graduated with him, slightly behind, and there are certainly valid criticisms of him that may explain why he is lagging slightly behind as the 4th of the 2011 GS winners, but not so very far behind.

You may want to add in tournament wins and their levels, or a similar different angle, for the 4 players, to add another means of comparison but I didn't really know where to get the data easily. Perhaps additional measures would show Oli to be further behind his 2011 peers, maybe not.

I hope I've made some sort of point, though the statisticians will probably be able to spot many errors and much specious reasoning

Thanks for posting that chart.

Vesely is very interesting because this time last year he was in very much a similar position as Oli, struggling to win matches and ranked outside the top 500, before suddenly winning back to back futures and making SF of virtually all his last events of the year so it seemed more of a matter of clicking mentally than gradually building up his game.

Im very much intigued about this concept of ''Clay is good for a players development.'' It certainly seems that both Bjorn and Jiri, who are more comfortable on clay, have found the progression to seniors more stable than Oli and Luke who have been far more hit and miss - possibly because the clay soaks up the increased power from the seniors but I dont think just playing on the clay for a while has much effect. It certainly looked like it had helped teach Laura about point constructing etc. prior to her USO run but that soon seemed to wear off. Conversely, Heather is very patient in rallies and with a brilliant understanding of how to build points yet hardly played on clay at all. Seems like a simple solution to a complex problem that I dont think works.