Week 18 - WTA Premier Mandatory - Madrid, Spain - Clay

kundalini · Specialist Reporter + Intermediate Club Player

Week 18 - WTA Premier Mandatory - Madrid, Spain - Clay

AliBlahBlah · All-time great

5 MP saved! That's refreshing match toughness and grit

4-6 2-5*

tony_orient · ATP qualifying

Bizarre game there with some great serves, easy errors and uncalled lets but Laura saves 5 match points to hold

Peter too · Tennis legend

R1: KONTA, Johanna (GBR) 22 lost to GARCIA, Caroline (FRA) 51 4-6 1-2 Ret.
R1: ROBSON, Laura (GBR) 426 lost to AZARENKA, Victoria (BLR) 4 5 4-6 2-6
R1: WATSON, Heather (GBR) LL 56 lost to GAVRILOVA, Daris (AUS) 39 CH=33 5-7 4-6

Julia Carrot · All-time great

Well it was much less painful to watch than it might have been. In fact I quite enjoyed it. The commentator's over enthusiasm for Laura was a bit cringe worthy at times though.

Helen40 · Grand Slam Champion

Oh, dear but sadly a quick last game

Still, not a bad match overall, encouraging for me and I hope Laura. A taste of what Laura can still do on a good day.

AliBlahBlah · All-time great

Better than expected.
I think Martina summed up very nicely most of what needs to happen for Laura to progress now. Get a good physical base, match tough, and work on the balls where you have to generate the pace.
Her ball striking is not in question.
Still, another 10 points, +20 ish places, and she is still the GB match leader for main draw WTA wins on clay this year, with one.

Of 7 GB ladies due to play today, no wins, including two downed by retirement/walkover

Peter too · Tennis legend

If Laura could play like that in all her matches she wouldn't take too long to get back in the top 100. The challenge is to play that well against lesser players.

kundalini · Specialist Reporter + Intermediate Club Player

Laura's best performance I've seen since her return from injury.

First set lots of stunning forehands. On the run she had a tendency to make errors long. Not much between the players, perhaps Azarenka came up with good serves when she needed them, while Laura didn't.

Second set. Lots more errors from Laura, some of them very careless on what should have been comfortable winners, others were awful shot selection. Several shots that would have won the point, just missed the lines. A few decent serves but still looks a long way off its peak. 2nd serve was very vulnerable. Volleys and drive volleys woeful from Laura. Azarenka annoyingly good when bp down, otherwise the margin might have been closer.

Overall looked a top 100 standard player, at times much higher than that. Does need to be far more consistent though and get more penetration on both first and second serves before she can expect to win matches at WTA level. Also more practice needed keeping the ball in play on the run.

-- Edited by kundalini on Sunday 1st of May 2016 05:16:17 PM

scottie1 · Futures level

AliBlahBlah wrote:
Better than expected.
I think Martina summed up very nicely most of what needs to happen for Laura to progress now. Get a good physical base, match tough, and work on the balls where you have to generate the pace.
Her ball striking is not in question.
Still, another 10 points, +20 ish places, and she is still the GB match leader for main draw WTA wins on clay this year, with one.

Of 7 GB ladies due to play today, no wins, including two downed by retirement/walkover

Martina also said Laura needs to drop to the ITF Circuit to get wins under her belt

tony_orient · ATP qualifying

Great to watch Laura strike the ball so well, and come up with some excellent points against one of the best players in the world. I think we saw the benefits today of Laura being able to play a consistent run of tournaments - between June and February because of further wrist pain and other injury niggles she was never able to get any momentum going at all.

On the other hand it's clear Laura still has loads of areas that need improvement (as pointed out by Martina Navratilova in the commentary). Laura's movement will improve with more matches as I still think it is partly due to her anticipation not being as good as it was but she will also need to improve the power in her first couple of steps. Laura's second serve has improved (not too worried about a low % points won v a great returner like Azarenka because her 2nd serve is miles better than earlier this year) but 1st serve is far too inconsistent. Other things like shot selection and hitting slower balls also need work.

There is a long list of things and she isn't going to solve all those issues in a short space of time but the good news is she is now striking the ball well enough to shift more of her training focus on these areas and also played well enough today to give me hope she can geed some good results on grass.

Didn't see Jo's match before she retired from an upper respiratory illness but given she was ill it's not sensible to read much into today's match. Basically the questions about how effective Jo will be on clay remain unanswered, but fingers crossed she recovers in time for Rome and gets a kind 1st round draw to build some momentum back up.

Helen40 · Grand Slam Champion

scottie1 wrote:
AliBlahBlah wrote:
Better than expected.
I think Martina summed up very nicely most of what needs to happen for Laura to progress now. Get a good physical base, match tough, and work on the balls where you have to generate the pace.
Her ball striking is not in question.
Still, another 10 points, +20 ish places, and she is still the GB match leader for main draw WTA wins on clay this year, with one.

Of 7 GB ladies due to play today, no wins, including two downed by retirement/walkover
Martina also said Laura needs to drop to the ITF Circuit to get wins under her belt

I'm surprised she said that, I wonder whether she's seen Laura's recent results.

Laura has been down that route at the start of her comeback, and it just didn't work for her. She tried to play her game with it's high risk strategy, and the score lines were worse than today's against very lowly ranked players. I personally think she has always been a big match player and will rise to bigger occasions (as she did today). So stay on the WTA circuit would be my choice for her. My biggest hopes this year are the French and the grass court season, especially Wimby.

AliBlahBlah · All-time great

scottie1 wrote:
AliBlahBlah wrote:
[...]
I think Martina summed up very nicely most of what needs to happen for Laura to progress now. Get a good physical base, match tough, and work on the balls where you have to generate the pace.
[...]
Martina also said Laura needs to drop to the ITF Circuit to get wins under her belt

I'd agree with that too. I thought the way she deconstructed the argument that Laura is a 'big match' or 'big court' player was very effective - you've got to earn it first, and tough though it is, sometimes you have to ear it more than once.

I'm still not in favour of Laura receiving a SW19 WC. Let me make a useless analogy... Mr. Drumpf reads one speech from a teleprompter and manages to not directly deliberately offend anyone, and his surrogates are falling over themselves to say how Presidential he is as a result.

I need more proof there lots more (active board doesn't have a 24 times underline option; would have been handy for the 'lots' there). I need more proof with Laura.
With Laura, at least (and in contrary to the other thing mentioned), things are starting to look as though they could be heading in the right direction, which is great. Now keep it up until the end of the year.

-- Edited by AliBlahBlah on Sunday 1st of May 2016 06:07:04 PM

Priesty · Challenger level

Totally agree that Laura and ITFs have never really mixed, although if she doesn't get her ranking up fairly quickly once the free passes to WTA events have dried up she might not have any choice about playing them, at least in the short term. Some encouraging signs today, just hope she can start picking up some wins pretty soon. A tough draw but after the 1st round draw she had in Rabat I'm not sure any of us can really complain.

I too thought Martina made some very good points during commentary.

tony_orient · ATP qualifying

I think Laura is right to be using her protected ranking while it still lasts (if for no other reason then not many people would turn down 13,250 for a day's work), and I have no problem with her accepting WCs on grass. But once Wimbledon finishes, Laura will (barring an unlikely series of wins) not be ranked high enough to have a choice. She will have to go back to the US and play the summer ITF circuit there.

By July though, her game should be in a much better position to tackle the ITF circuit, and she won't have any other option to get back to the main tour but to win matches at ITF level, mixed in with WTA qualifying where she can get in.