Mandy has been training at Soto's. There is a video of her on her instagram feed hitting balls under the Barcelona blue skies. Wrist looked ok there. Let's hope it holds up under match conditions now, we all know how tough it can be getting back from wrist surgery, so wishing Mandy well now and holding thumbs a lot.
Taro and Emily are two names I have not come across before. Generally I see players emerge through juniors or via the college route. Obviously working too hard and not paying attention, good luck to them both.
Taro is 24 and played some ITF (mainly qualifiers) in 2010 and also played in the second half of last year - mainly at Sharm. Taro has also played a fair number of UK tour events (ranked 58) grade 1/2. Won the Cumberland grade 2 last August.
Emily is 19, from Yorkshire, and has played a number of UK tour events including the grade 1 at Tipton. LTA points mainly from grade 2/3.
Taro's 2017 record was 2-8
She played events in Egypt, the UK & Netherlands.
Both wins were in a FQR in Sharm el Sheikh (the FQR was the first round of qualifying in each case) against unranked players.
Emily went 1-6 in 2017
She played events in Norway, the UK & Portugal
Her win came in another FQR that was also the QR1, in Norway against an UNR player
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Data I post, opinions I offer, 'facts' I assert, are almost certainly all stupidly wrong.
Does anybody know whether Amanda is entitled to any SR entries? She was certainly high enough ranked when initially injured, but I seem to remember that you have to be out injured for six months? I think Amanda may have been out for about 4 months, had a go, had surgery, and then been out for another four months. Not sure if this counts?
She's about to start dropping all of the points from her good form last Spring, so if she cannot use SRs to get into some 25ks, the she faces a long and winding road back from very nearly UNR, which will take some time if relying solely on 15k points.