I'd been interested to see if Richard Gabb would be down for a Challenger this week ( which he is ) for the following quirky facts.
He has been playing a Canadian futures this week ( Week 11 ) though has recently exited it. He is down for Challengers in weeks 12 & 13. All three of these tournament counts will be added on 31/03/14, after the Miami fortnight.
Now next year, Indian Wells and Miami take place nearly a week later so there will be no points update on 30/03/15. Points added 31/03/14 ( potentially 3 tournaments for Richard ) will come off on 06/04/15, as will this potential week 14 challenger ( added 07/04/14 ).
So if Richard scores points in all 4 of these tournaments, he will have 4 scores due to come off on 06/04/15 !
Coxy is in trouble, isn't he? If he doesn't graduate to Challenger level in the next few weeks, he's almost surely going down, because there's way too much to defend post-Wimbledon.
10K at last.
-- Edited by Salmon on Saturday 15th of March 2014 12:58:29 AM
I would have thought Andy ( he's still not bad :) ) and James would seem the obvious singles players. Although Leon has shown ( I think a pleasing ) instinct to go with form and his gut feeling at the time.
As long as Andy and James are both fighting fit, I would go with the same 4 as in the USA ( i.e. plus Colin and Dom ), with Andy playing doubles a very serious option.
Kyle or Dan S ( who isn't afraid of the red stuff ) as backup. Although, in some ways I would be reluctant to "distract" Dan S just now.
I'm not at all sure that Mr Inglot's performance on clay in Latin America would mean that he (or for that matter Mr Smith) would necessarily feel confident going into this tie. That said, it's not easy to choose the doubles team for this, given that there's been almost no chance for the doubles players to play on clay so far this year. There might be an argument for going for three singles players and one doubles.
Edgbaston 25K - not one GB girl has made the main draw yet. It begs the question(again), should we be putting on 25K tournaments when we have no direct entries.
Naomi is first alt, Sam 4th and Tara 6th
I'll try and guess at the wildcards - Freya, Eden Silva plus Sam and Tara.
Edgbaston 25K - not one GB girl has made the main draw yet. It begs the question(again), should we be putting on 25K tournaments when we have no direct entries.
Naomi is first alt, Sam 4th and Tara 6th
I'll try and guess at the wildcards - Freya, Eden Silva plus Sam and Tara.
I agree completely re the abundance of 25ks.
And backed up all the more by the fact that so many girls are currently (or have been recently) off elsewhere in search of 10ks.
If the LTA really wants to boost the UK girls' rankings, a couple of 10ks in UK towns that have poor airport/international train service would be perfect.
Most Europeans wouldn't bother to make the trip and a lot of our younger/weaker players would get a good chance to actually achieve something (as opposed to getting knocked out QR1 of the 25k) and the better women could aim to actually win something and boost women's tennis in the UK (and also get some points as many, like Jade and Sam, have very unbalanced points tallies).
Of course, one or two may zoom through next week, which would be wonderful, but the other women in Britain deserve a bit of thought and planning too.
Some 25Ks are fine, but the balance seems very wrong, and just makes life very difficult for many of our girls ( travel with limited resources or be generally completely out of their depth in 25K qualifying ).
I see that there is a 10K in Gloucester in Week 15, but I certainly agree that there should be more.
The reason for holding 25k's historically was because of the ranking points per prize money theory.
Winning R1 for 8 points compared with 1 point for a 10k and only 10 for a 50k. The Aussies basically had every tournament as a 25k most likely for those reasons.
So its a tricky one, clearly 10k's would be better suited to our spread of players ranking wise, but it doesn't earn them many ranking points. In a world where less and less tournaments are being held and so fields are much stronger, the days of 25k tournaments with weak fields are probably not going to be revisited any time soon. In the summer there are more opportunities for these types of fields but certainly not at this time of year currently.