Man City x Leicester City x (Edited out)

Could be a lively evening.

RE American youngsters - I really like seeing young players coming through, of whatever nationality. But I do think that a lot of these US youngsters are getting promoted to rankings way beyond their actual talent or stage of development, to a degree that is detrimental both to the standard of the sport, and to their own longterm careers.

This particular tournament looks like a particularly glaring example. Organised for the Fed Cup Week, with the top 4 players from every nation absent, about 80% of the players who might normally want to play at a 100k are busy elsewhere. It's crammed with Americans, some of whom seem to me to play very mediocre tennis, and they can't all lose. They are, largely in the absence of international competition, carving up a huge amount of ranking points between them.

IIRC, the LTA's pre-Wimbledon 50k at Ilkley 2015, had a cut-off of around WR195 for qualifying. Here, at a 100k, WR250 made the main draw.

So there are a lot of pretty cheap ranking points on offer. Last year, EWS gets the biggest doubles win of her career, NaomiC the biggest singles tally of her comeback; this year NaomiB is in the hunt for the biggest tallies of her career in both. I hope to see a field packed with Brits in 2017.

Beyond this tournament, the USTA now organises one Grand Slam, as we do, but also has 9 WTAs, to our 3, including a couple of the biggest, in Indian Wells and Miami. The ranking points on offer at these 100ks are around 12x those on offer at a 10k, and they organise several others, all of which offer wildcard opportunities to US girls. Here, there were 13 young Yanks in R2, all picking up a minimum of 13 points, for winning a single match - just a bit better than Maia would get for winning her fifth match of the week, tomorrow in Glasgow.

What are the chances of Katie Swan, then, catching up with CiCi Bellis? Very, very slim, for the foreseeable future...

www.lta.org.uk/major-events/international-events/aegon-gb-pro-series/

Coming into this week, CiCi had a doubles ranking, based on her 3 R1 losses from last year. In effect, she gets a ranking because the USTA is rich. Katie didn't; based to playing 2 tournaments, making the final in 1. CiCi has now won two matches, and moves onto 53 points. If Katie wins 4 matches at Sunderland, followed by 4 matches at Wirral, skips Eastbourne Trophy 50k (clash with French Open juniors), skips Surbiton and Ilkley (impossibly strong fields), then gets another 4 wins under her belt at the 10k at Nottingham in September, the she's nearly there, but no her finalist's points from last year are now deducted, so she has to play and win another title at Roehampton at the end of September, and nearly there now, by around Halloween, at Loughborough, she'll shoot 2 points past CiCi if she makes the final, and loses. There is some good news though, because her new total of 55 points, for winning 15 matches, and losing 1, gets her to around WR610 or so in doubles, which won't often be good enough to move up to 25k level, but she might sometimes get a seeding at 10ks.

It's an absurd system, and the USTA are playing it to perfection, for the greatest possible benefit to their players; while the LTA seem hell-bent on creating conditions that rob our players of any decent opportunity to pursue a professional career playing tennis.

Coup Droit wrote:

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wimbledont - you are a spoiler !!! So where's the spoil alert on your post above for us Match of the Day fans who steer clear of all football webpages until midnight on Saturdays, huh????

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  CD - I am sorry. So used to posting live sports results here, I didn't think. Will - far too late, I fear - edit...

tony_orient wrote:

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Any idea when Naomi's match starts - it's been a while since the doubles ended.

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 Should be soon, flashscore has the starting time as 19:00

Help!
I'm a bit late to the match and I can't make the stream work - it wants to start from the beginning of the match. When I move the bar along it stops and then restarts and the beginning.
What am I doing wrong????????

edit OK it seems to have sorted itself out!