Of course it's disappointing again and no doubt noone is more frustrated than Jo herself. I so hope that she can find ways / people to help her bring her A game more often to matches and particularly at the sharp end.
Always interesting when you see 'defaulted' on the draw-sheet. CiCi Bellis' opponent, Susanne Celik, got defaulted yesterday for hitting a ball at an official.
Had Johanna made it through she would have played the phenom wunderkind.
As it is though, she is, perhaps surprisingly, into the SF of the doubles, playing with Maria Sanchez, with whom I imagine Johanna might get along very well, as she's exceedingly nice, gentle and patient.
Doubles
R1: Slater/Pera (GBR/USA) lost to Lao/Wong (USA/USA) [3] 3-6 6-7(4)
R1: Konta/Sanchez (GBR/USA) defeated Chang/Scholl (USA/USA) 6-3 6-3
Anyone know who is coaching Jo? Her ITF bio says Estaban Carril / Jose Manuel Garcia, but I don't think that's right as I think she has had an LTA allocated coach since taking British nationality. Whoever it is, I would suggest that maybe she needs a change given her erratic form. They're clearly not inspiring in her the confidence she needs to consistently unlock the level of tennis she is capable of.
But well done Jo in the doubles, every little bit of success must help her.
She's chopped and changed coach several times in the past 18 months (not all down to her, LTA playing their usual games switching allocated coaches around or just people coming and going (a similar fate befell Katie OB and it basically destroyed her progress as soon as she hit top 100 - sound familiar?), although I was never very sure why she was working with Cayer for such a long time (who she was close to and got on very well with) firstly in the background alongside Picot, and then pretty much exclusively - given that as good and experiences as he is he's ultimately employed by the LTA to be a doubles coach).
But I have to say I've been very unimpressed with what she is showing on court since moving to Carril after only a brief period of working with Lisnard (where she looked good over the grass). Her forehand technique seems to have been played around with and it's not good. Not sure what happened with the Lisnard relationship because it seemed like a good set-up with some training out in France, and then it just stopped.
-- Edited by PaulM on Friday 20th of February 2015 11:19:10 AM
I thought I remembered reading somewhere here that the LTA pulled Cayer out of doubles (a fact which may have had something to do with the overall dip in GB doubles form last year ...) as part of their strategy to shift focus onto singles.
Nice to see Ms Konta do well here - and as several have said nice that she has a very good partner. Don't know anything about Ms Sanchez personally, but she's supposed to be very handy indeed in doubles, isn't she?
With regard to the coaching, the constant changes probably explain the struggles and setbacks when a match is close or when there is a small momentum shift to the opponent. She probably has half a dozen different approaches and strategies going through her head at those moments - could explain her somewhat panicked play at those kind of situations. From what you say Paul, the current one isn't ideal, but she may be better staying with him for a while just to get some stability and back to one clear way of playing.