Just noticed how few points Sam Murray has accumulated in 2013 compared to those Brits ranked immediately above and below her.

She's continued to slowly climb the rankings this year because she must have done even worse in the first half of 2012. But unless she gets cracking with some big points scoring tournaments she will be putting huge pressure on herself for the back end of the year, when she has tons of points to defend.

As with Tara Moore, a SF this week looks like a minimum performance.......as it should be with any $25k they choose to play, but they ought to be winning these tournaments with regularity if top 100-125 is their goal over the next 12 months. Frankly, if they continue to progress, $10ks should be eliminated altogether by next year, and $25ks only entered if form is suffering, as a warm up tournament, or if the schedule makes it less "convenient" to travel long distances to bigger events.

Sam does well in North America, so I'm rooting for her to sneak a great reult this week. 

korriban wrote:

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murray_2k9 wrote:

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To go from not being broken to not holding serve, when you have a weapon like Naomis seems to suggest an injury. Hopefully not though, perhaps her opponent just opened her shoulders and started painting the lines.

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 Actually this type of scoreline used to happen quite often to Naomi - back end of 2011 and early 2012 for sure. She would completely blow her opponent away first set with her huge serve. By the second set the opponent gets used to the pace of the serve and the match is very competitive. And by the third set the serve becomes a weakness as it drops off and/or the opponent can by now use the pace as a weapon on return - it becomes a liability. I suspect Naomi's return game and overall confidence might also be affected by how easily she is holding serve.....that's a common problem for many players.

-- Edited by korriban on Thursday 18th of July 2013 06:25:21 AM

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 Can certainly see the logic in this and Coup Droits explanation and it seems a shame, yet easily rectifiable with the right training block. Certainly, as matches wear on, the big serve generally becomes more advantageous because you're able to get more cheap points to rattle through your serve and therefore keep the pressure on your opponent, so its a real shame that Naomi isnt capitalizing on her height/serve.

I think Jade had a set point on Sawayanagi's serve but the Japanese player held on and has just broken back 3-6 5-5*

Sam is a break up in the 2nd though, 6-3 4-1*

Coup Droit wrote:

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Yep, but on the plus side for Sam (and unlike several of the others) she has very few points coming off in the next few months - nothing even in double-figures until the end of October.

Which obviously narrows down her year to the fact that she had a few spectacular results back in late October/November last year - in fact, 140 of Sam's current 238 points comes from those five weeks.

It makes her very vulnerable come autumn BUT does mean that she has no pressure now and should really take advantage of it to pile on as many counting tournaments as possible.

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 Interesting point about having no pressure now, and it does make sense with no points to defend. But when I was asking a few players during June about this, their answers were a little bit surprising but still understandable. Quite a few said having no points to defend can actually cause pressure, because you know this is a great opportunity to really rise up the rankings.