I'm interested in people's views on the women's side of the game about plans for the grass court season.
The reason I ask is that we have 3 girls who may get in directly or guarantee wildcards and then a whole host of girls who probably will not get entry into the 50K's, but are climbing the rankings and may justify some sort of wildcard.
The schedule is as follows:
30/05 - Eastbourne 50K
04/06 - Surbiton 50K
04/06 - Nottingham WTA int
11/06 - Ilkley 50K
11/06 - Birmingham Premier
18/06 - Eastbourne Premier
18/06 - Wimbledon wildcard playoff and qualifying
27/06 - Wimbledon
We had some strange events last year - Harriet played Eastbourne and missed Wimbledon qualifying
Surbiton qualifying was really empty as most foreign players went up to Nottingham
I'm not sure on the rules on wildcards for WTA against ITF
Looking at the players:
JoKo - will have no issue getting in direct to all tournaments
Hev and Naomi - should get direct into Nottingham and Wimbledon, but may need wildcards to Birmingham and Eastbourne
Then you have the rest, all with cases for wildcards for qualifying wildcards:
Laura Robson, Katie Swan, Freya Christie, Tara Moore, Katy Dunne, Lisa Whybourn, Katie Boulter, Maia Lumsden, Gabi Taylor etc
I'm pretty sure Katie Swan will get a main draw wildcard for either Birmingham or Eastbourne and probably Wimbledon if she climbs the rankings sufficiently and will use her JE cards for overseas tournaments and qualifying wildcards for the remainder.
WTA rules (cover WTA events + Grand Slams) are 6 wildcards max, of which you can have a maximum of 3 main draw. There is an exception to this rule, which is if you use 3 main draw then get offered a Grand Slam main draw, you are allowed to accept it.
ITF rules (cover 100K, 75K, 50K, 25K etc) - again max of 6, of which up to 3 can be main draw. So you could have 6 qualifying, or 3 main draw + 3 qualifying, or various combinations in between those extremes.
WTA calendar has Birmingham down as a 32 player main draw which would be a change.
For Wimbledon I think I would go Katie Swan, Freya, Laura and one other for main draw, then hopefully that would leave enough room for most of the rest to get qualifying wildcards. 2015's injury situation has left us with rather too many candidates for qualifying and not enough obvious candidates for main draw. As ever, the most likely players to win a match in qualifying, get promoted into the main draw, where their chances are minimal.
Eastbourne 50K - lots of competition for both main draw and qualifying WCs on offer. After that it is less of an issue because there are 2 events on each week.
-- Edited by kundalini on Wednesday 2nd of March 2016 04:42:37 PM
