Week 44 - ITF ($50K+H) - Nantes, France Hard

Peter too · Tennis legend

Week 44 - ITF ($50K+H) - Nantes, France Hard

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Q1: BERISHA, Rona (GBR) UNR lost to BOEV, Michaela (BEL) 6 586 6-3 6-1

steven · Tennis legend

I've had my attention drawn to the main draw here. Barnstaple points are 25% higher per round but it's roughly comparable, 50K+H cf. 75K. The Barnstaple entry list was stronger in the first place but the Nantes draw has been further weakened by 4 withdrawals since the draw was made, including the top 2 seeds!

The tale of carnage so far goes ...

- 2nd seed Giorgi withdrew, replaced by a lucky loser, with Foretz upgraded to 9th seed and moved to the bottom of the draw
- top seed Niculescu withdrew, replaced by a lucky loser, with Dulgheru upgraded to 10th seed and moved to the top of the draw, where she went out to a lucky loser in R1
- two more players replaced by lucky losers
- 3rd seed Putintseva went out 2 & 3 in R1 to 24-y-o French wild card Kinnie Laisné ranked 579 (CH 295 in 2009 then missed all of 2010 and much of 2011/12 through injury)

If any Brits had played in the main draw here, they'd probably be thanking their lucky stars they'd decided to play here instead of in north Devon!

indiana · Tennis legend

....and there would be someone(s) coming on here chastising them for not "supporting" their home tournament.

steven · Tennis legend

Would there? I think most of us just want them to do whatever works best for them.

indiana · Tennis legend

Oh, maybe just that I remember it being brought up by someone about Naomi choosing to play in France earlier this year.

And in that particulat case it was doubly unfair given apparently Naomi had close associations with the hosting club.

steven · Tennis legend

You might be right - the only similar thing I can remember was being (happily) surprised to see a poster of Lisa advertising one of the French tournaments and it turned out she was linked to the club concerned.

paulisi · Tennis legend

indiana wrote:
Oh, maybe just that I remember it being brought up by someone about Naomi choosing to play in France earlier this year.

And in that particulat case it was doubly unfair given apparently Naomi had close associations with the hosting club.

I'll take the blame for that, not knowing Naomi's history and not understanding her picking a French tournament compared to a similar tournament in Shrewsbury(?)

steven · Tennis legend

Of course, if one of the GB WCs in Barnstaple had opted for Nantes and got in there, it would have freed up and extra WC and then we'd have been doubly happy with them wink

I doubt it was possible to guess in advance that one of the WCs would have got in direct, of course.