Week 44 - ITF ($50K) - Toronto, Canada Hard

Peter too · Tennis legend

Week 44 - ITF ($50K) - Toronto, Canada Hard

tony_orient · ATP qualifying

Laura about to start her first indoor hard court match in 4 1/2 years

Helen40 · Grand Slam Champion

hmmm, and is down 1-5

steven · Tennis legend

Eek - I wasn't expecting this match to be a problem - Wacnik was a decent (but far from top) college player until about 18 months ago and this would be a career best ranking scalp by some distance. Laura has now got it back to 3-5* hopefully the start of a turnaround.

Helen40 · Grand Slam Champion

She lost the first set 6-3. I only hope that she can regroup and win the match.

the addict · Tennis legend

Only a few points in it for the first set - serving stats are good, break points bad

DF · Tennis legend

Laura takes the second set 6-2
Now for the deciding set. . . .

the addict · Tennis legend

Much better second set, taken 6-2, with 3 breaks to 1

steven · Tennis legend

the addict wrote:
Only a few points in it for the first set - serving stats are good, break points bad

Yes, I had assumed it must be a double fault fest if she was losing but when I checked, she's only had 1 df to her opponent's 6. She's back in it now, thankfully, though has just been broken at the start of the 3rd 3-6 6-2 0-1*

PaulM · Tennis legend

Broken from 40-15 up

4-5*

PaulM · Tennis legend

Loses 6-4 in the third. Dreadful.

4 match losing streak against players she shouldn't be having troubles with. Seems like the couple if good weeks in the summer were a blip, as they flatter an otherwise extremely poor season, even accounting for it being a comeback.

Scheduling seems bizarre to me. Why go from outdoors in USA to indoors in Canada just to go outdoors in the USA again next week, when there is a 50k outdoors in the States this week as well.

She needs a brutal off season regime to take advantage of being fit again, and be ready to really start motoring from the off in 2017.

These results are grim, but also self perpetuating. Lost 7 points in a row from *4-4 40-15, and only saved two match points courtesy of double faults. That has to be from getting tight as she had gotten back on top in the decider.

-- Edited by PaulM on Monday 31st of October 2016 11:01:35 PM

blob · All-time great

Some extraordinary mitigation notwithstanding, and there could be many explanations, particularly at this point in the season; that's a pretty horrible result.
But, Laura has only really played anything approaching well in two weeks in the entirety of her return in the period from Eastbourne 2015 on - those were really encouraging levels of play; Landisville & US Open Qualifying this year, but they vanished as quickly and unexpectedly as they came.
The baseline performance, taken as a whole, is still WR 500+.
So, perhaps this shouldn't be a surprise. It's actually representative of the underlying trend of the levels she has been achieving.
Re-visiting an old chestnut, it will be good when all the points on Laura's record are hers and hers alone, and the ranking truly reflects the performance levels.

Fervent wishes for a blank slate and reset in 2017.

the addict · Tennis legend

From 0-2 to 4-3 to 4-6
In the match, 102 points to 95, 5/15 break points to 5/14
4 aces/6 DF to 0/15
Should have been better than that, so plenty of work to do in the off-season.

Oakland2002 · All-time great

I still think she will be fine assuming she gets stuck into the off season and gets another 6 months injury free.

tony_orient · ATP qualifying

Another disappointing result for Laura, and followed a familiar pattern of a slow start followed by easily winning the second set and losing a close decider. She has lost a few matches recently winning more points (102-95 today) and the wild momentum swings suggest it's mainly mental as she can dominate for spells but not put it together for a match.