PaulM wrote:

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Emily's opponent was Wimbledon runner-up in the juniors last year though.

Hopefully the main draw will bring greater joy!

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Hopefully. For good or bad, our top ranked 12 are a very distinctly ranked group from #13 on.

jb288 wrote:

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Watched snippets of several matches.

A lot of the players could have learnt a lot from looking at Ella Taylor in her first set vs Katie. No great weapons (she's only 5'2'), but really great at the basic skill of getting balls back inside the court and deep on a consistent basis, with good movement. Lots of the players I saw today (not just Brits!) just weren't doing that - often going for winners or unable to keep the ball in court during extended rallies. Katie did well too of course, but in that first set Ella was really pushing her for every point.

Saw the start of Gemma's game, but the standard was very poor from both players at that point - perhaps they were both slow to get going; Gemma has a big first serve but didn't see much off the ground.

Eden had the capacity to beat Miyazaki, but simply couldn't keep enough balls in - she was trying to kill points too soon I think. Similarly Freya; she was really struggling with her serve at times as well, and seemed in a bad frame of mind, understandably. Laura D has a great first serve, but again made a lot of unforced errors; her shots seem a little tentative at times, but she worked some nice points.

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 Thanks for the report. Ive never seen Gemma or Ella play so it's great to get an impression of their games.

MD is out

Katie B vs Martincova
Tara vs Naomi 
Laura vs Erakovic
Harriet vs Garcia-Perez
Heather vs Kudryavtseva
Katy vs Gabi 

Not a bad draw for Laura - Erakovic hasn't won a WTA MD match since November. Kudryatseva similar.

Garcia-Perez is making mincemeat of 25ks on clay, but didn't do any grass last year. (Edit - actually she beat Lisa in 3 sets last year and did fairly well in 2015 in the 50ks)

Martincova has beaten Laura & Naomi this year.

The doubles draw is interesting.....Joss/Laura vs Anna/Paula Kania

Heather playing with Asia Muhammad and Naomi playing with Maria Sanchez. Tara with Nicola Geuer.

All others as expected.

While I recognise many like the more variety of not having all GB matches, often they are good tennis draws, particularly such as in loaded grass court draws where they come in as some of the lowest ranked, often on WCs with not good odds for them elsewhere in the draw.

Katy vs Gabi is a great tennis draw chance for each for R2 in a 100K with 13 ranking points straight off to the winner. Then potentially Vekic in R2 may not look great but a non seed is going to be bracketed against some seed in one of the first two rounds.