The Optimist wrote:

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Jaggy1876 wrote:

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Wish Anna would stick to singles though she is def top 300 up there with Tara and Sam anyway. I always feel doubles is conceding. Good results my doubles will always be conference level stuff for me sorry.

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 My impression is that neither Joss or Anna feel their bodies will now stand up to the rigours of a meaningful career in singles.  Given they are both skilled at dubs, I think they've made a really good decision

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seen Anna play singles last year at Roehampton just not good enough  to make top 250 sorry

Of course singles would be most peoples first choice as a career....by a long way in most cases. But the chance to play on the main tour as a doubles player, living the life, earning the wage, playing the stadium, the slams etc is surely more appealing to several rather than the grind as a singles player on the levels below?  Besides, a decision like this can always be reversed!

-- Edited by Shhh on Saturday 19th of July 2014 12:23:01 PM

Shhh wrote:

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Of course singles would be most peoples first choice as a career....by a long way in most cases. But the chance to play on the main tour as a doubles player, living the life, earning the wage, playing the stadium, the slams etc is surely more appealing to several rather than the grind as a singles player on the levels below?  Besides, a decision like this can always be reversed!

-- Edited by Shhh on Saturday 19th of July 2014 12:23:01 PM

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 It is also far more lucrative. Unless you can break into the top 100 in singles you are not going to make any money. If you get into the WTA/ATP level doubles then you can make good money - Jamie Murray recently passed the $1M total earnings. Plus you can play for 5 or even 10 years longer than a singles player.

I certainly think that Anna was top 200 potential a few years ago, with her general play and how she had advanced to WR 262 in 2010.

But she has been severely held back by injuries, and as folk have suggested these may have left long term singles issues compared with playing in doubles.

Given that ( although I don't know how restricted or potentially restricted she is ) and how well her doubles partnership with Joss is going, I think her concentration on doubles is very understandable.

Phil reported that they have a medium term aim of CR 150 and direct entry to all the Slams. With their rate of progress, they will already be verging on individual top 100 doubles rankings, CR 200, if they win the title here, so that seems very realistic, and it is far from clear quite how far they can go.

Of course many of us much more focus on singles, and would like to see how far players can get in singles before / instead of concentrating on doubles. For instance, I felt very much that Colin Fleming had quite a bit of untapped potential in singles, maybe even a top 200 player. So in some ways, I was rather disappointed to see him just fully focussing on doubles. But I recognise that he was probably never going to likely challenge near the top 100 in singles and that for him, his decision to concentrate on doubles has been fully vindicated, certainly in monetary terms and probably many of his experiences.

Good work from BT Sport to cover the match

At least they have a game on the board now, but has been quite one-sided so far. Hopefully Joss and Anna will have settled by the time the second set starts.

That was disappointing - totally outplayed.

How many times did Anna get lobbed???

Still a good week 3k each and a load of ranking points.

Baku next?