Week 7 - ITF ($25K) - Surprise, USA Hard

Peter too · Tennis legend

Week 7 - ITF ($25K) - Surprise, USA Hard

vohor · Grand Slam Champion

With 8 qualifying berths and a potential Q3 against the 16th qseed, on paper this is the most favourable draw possible for Laura so here's hoping she can make it count and then win some MD matches too. GL Laura :)

philwrig · Hall of fame

It does look like a great opportunity for Laura, scanning her potential opponents it doesn't appear that there are any banana skins. Hopefully Laura has been able to find some improvement on the practice court and we see evidence of this starting this week.

philwrig · Hall of fame

Just seen her opponent is only 16 and has a JWR of 34, so is useful.

tony_orient · ATP qualifying

Laura does seem to be finding some of the better junior players with some regularity in these $25k qualies draws. Mateas has some useful wins in her juniors record in recent months (v Robillard-Millette and Mihalikova) but she only managed 3 games against Katie Swan in November. Laura should win, but given her seeding guaranteed a player outside the top 800 she could have got a much easier opponent.

2nd round could be a complete contrast in 38 year old Lindsay Lee-Waters

indiana · Tennis legend

Still it's a draw thar Laura should be scooting through to the main draw. Like Phil I really hope to see evidence of improvement here.

WavenNarsam · Lower Club Player

tony_orient wrote:
Laura does seem to be finding some of the better junior players with some regularity in these $25k qualies draws. Mateas has some useful wins in her juniors record in recent months (v Robillard-Millette and Mihalikova) but she only managed 3 games against Katie Swan in November. Laura should win, but given her seeding guaranteed a player outside the top 800 she could have got a much easier opponent.

2nd round could be a complete contrast in 38 year old Lindsay Lee-Waters

I watched the match against Katie and though Katie was good, Mateas just didn't turn up. She hasn't had much success on the junior tour this season either. Out first round in the Australian Open. Not sure if she's done any more tournaments but she's got 0 points in singles.

Long time reader · Lower Club Player

Laura lost 6-7(4) 6-4 6-3

I think its probably time she just started playing at wta level again as all these losses in 25k qualies are surely now doing more harm than good.

I must admit after thinking results weren't that important last year when she first came back, I am starting to lose a bit of hope.

philwrig · Hall of fame

The problem for me is that there appears to be no improvement week on week, which I find quite surprising, unless she is still hampered with injury there really is no explanation, her opponent is probably a little bit better than I first thought, but this really should have been a straight sets victory. Laura's supposed to be starting to use her PR slots, so I suppose she might as well have a go, because playing these events don't seem to be helping her that much.

indiana · Tennis legend

Pity, and yes a bit worrying.

I do find her still so relatively under performing in 25Ks a bit perplexing. Her upcoming WTAs should certainly tell more of a story, I'm a bit worried right now what story they will tell. First more 25K business next week to please hopefully build some confidence.

vohor · Grand Slam Champion

Wasn't expecting that :(

The Optimist · ATP qualifying

Long time reader wrote:
Laura lost 6-7(4) 6-4 6-3

I think its probably time she just started playing at wta level again as all these losses in 25k qualies are surely now doing more harm than good.

I must admit after thinking results weren't that important last year when she first came back, I am starting to lose a bit of hope.

If she can't get through 25K qualies, I can't really see much success further up the ladder. I know she likes a big court and it can be hard to get into a rhythm sometimes against lower ranked players but you really would expect her to come through most of these matches, even if they didn't go smoothly. As philwrig says, no overall improvement. It all just seems a bit stop start to me. You would expect someone after such a long injury period to be trying to get match after match to get all those intangibles you only get on a match court back into place. Instead it seems to be the odd match every few weeks. Oh well, fingers crossed for the next one.

scottie1 · Futures level

Would it not have been better for Laura to have played the three British ITF Tournaments She would have had some wins and gained confidence

The Optimist · ATP qualifying

I guess her training base is in the States at the moment, so these 25Ks seem more convenient. Also, extra pressure playing in the UK as it's a bit of a goldfish bowl for her if things aren't exactly going swimmingly.

-- Edited by The Optimist on Monday 15th of February 2016 11:38:25 AM

WavenNarsam · Lower Club Player

Both statements above are valid and my opinion is more in agreement with Scottie, but they both have an unfortunate whiff of hindsight about them. Doing the US 25k series would certainly seem like the best option before the series started as it gave her more chance of increasing her ranking further. However, with one tournament left that hasn't worked out at all so going to the British tournaments would have been the best option now as she would have been in the main draw and would only need to win one match to get some points on the board. Then the other side of that is would Laura really benefit from dropping all the way down to the 10k level? Based on what has happened, I think she probably would, but that's hindsight again.

I think the British fans and the media need to wipe away the first five years of her career because this injury has forced her to start from the beginning and maybe thinking she could walk (or at least go deep) through these lower level tournaments was a little unrealistic. We may find out more about her as a pro when she starts to use her PRs but I think the results on the ITF tour should be taken into more consideration for her current level at the moment if I'm honest.