Weeks 27 & 28 - The Championships, Wimbledon - women's singles (grass)

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Weeks 27 & 28 - The Championships, Wimbledon - women's singles (grass)

wales1994 · County player

Not looking good so far... 0-4* down. Katie isn't really doing much right, still looks nervy whereas Mihaela isn't missing!

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Wonder if Katie prepared with Liam? Or any swingy lefty? She's having a lot of problems with it.
But Sam Smith says the score is not a true reflection

wales1994 · County player

She's been in a lot of the points / rallies, the score just indicates the lack of experience in big points etc. Her serve has massively let her down though. But there have been many game/break points that've gone missing. Hope she can salvage this set and make it a more respectable scoreline.

Jaffa · Challenger level

Playing a lot better now.

the addict · Tennis legend

Katie B sitting with Annie supporting

wales1994 · County player

Disappointing match from Katie, she couldn't quite put it together at the important moments. But this match definitely shows where the experience and mentality is at, once she gets more experience at this level and develop the mentality... she'll get up there. :)

Ace Ventura · Tennis legend

Yeah, disappointing scoreline, although a lot of the games appeared close, so wasn't like she lot each game to 0 or 15. Whatever happened in this match was just a bonus anyway, for someone ranked outside the top 200 (before the tournament) to be among the last 64 women is very much job done.

I guess it does just show how important the draw is though because had this have been round 1 then you'd say it would been a disappointing tournament as she lost more comfortably than some of the other wildcards to a lower ranked player, but that reasonably kind R1 win ensured that it had been a success for her regardless.

Andy Parker · Club Coach

Sad for Katie - Buzarnescu looked so good today.

Seeing Nix's comments about the lack of support for home players due to the ignorance of many watching reminds me of one of the funniest things I have seen at Wimbledon over the years - one year I was watching Jana Novotna on the old Court 13, when she was at the height of her fame (for anyone under 40, she really was famous) and had lost that infamous final the previous year when she blubbed on the Duchess of Kent.

Anyway mid match at a change of ends, a loud very upper class American man was suddenly brought into the seating area of Court 13 surrounded by a couple of attendants direct from the noisy hospitality tent next door - he asked who was playing, oblivious to the players in front of him or the scoreboard, and was told by his attendant 'Jana Novotna', to which he replied 'Who's he!'. The attendant replied that the he was quite a famous 'She' and the drunk yank said, 'Oh women, no I'm not interested in that' and they promptly took him back presumably to his corporate hospitality tent to avoid him having to see any tennis (what a silly idea). Really you couldn't make it up - Novotna was front page news at that time and the tragedy was that someone like him could have probably wandered in to any court he liked, but chose the time instead to drink himself silly and be really loud.

He's the worst, but last year I was sat in front of a lady who asked her daughter why one of the players was now playing at a different end to where she had been before (this was after she had been 'watching' nearly a full set of a match and appeared to have only just noticed the change). The way she conveyed it very loudly was also like she'd spotted some sleight of hand that none of the rest of us had seen - maybe she was pretending to be the other player and stealing her points - who knows, but this switching of ends was decidedly fishy?

Anyway I know this post isn't really that British women, but it was very disappointing for Gabi to find the crowd rooting for her opponent - hope she nevers suffers that again; it must have affected her mood and will to win, as she would have been anticipating a favourable home crowd.

-- Edited by Andy Parker on Wednesday 4th of July 2018 12:56:48 PM

-- Edited by Andy Parker on Wednesday 4th of July 2018 01:06:50 PM

-- Edited by Andy Parker on Wednesday 4th of July 2018 01:11:57 PM

Grachka · County player

I was in the Gabi crowd and it was fairly subdued throughout, but a lot of that was down to the very slow start she had...it was difficult for the crowd to get a lot of momentum behind her as it swung quite violently between the two players.

It did liven up a bit as she got ahead in the second set, but she fell behind again quickly in the third and the crowd quietened down again. I tend to find Wimbledon are a transient crowd on generally non-tennis fans anyway, who are less inclined for boorish cheering.

By the way, there was a fairly small band of very vocal Bouchard supporters near where we were sitting, and (I think) a small band on the other side, but I think they were just being very vocal, as opposed to outnumbering the Brit supporters.

Grachka · County player

Plus one of the most vociferous of Bouchard supporters was wearing an England polo! A wolf in sheep's clothing biggrin

Zed · Improver

Some observations from a newbie...
Myself and my wife traveled from Ashford in Kent (on holiday from Scotland), to Wimbledon joining the queue at 8am, nos 7485.
Now I get the Q tradition, but we never got to the ticket gate till 1pm.
Hardly any queue there, but the bottleneck seemed to be security, where not only did they scan your bag (slowly) But then checked the bag as well - my bag was empty as Id put everything on the tray...

Anyway we were there to see Gabi, so immediately queued at court 14 on the south side from about end of 2nd set in the ongoing match. Judging by the amount of Japanese the court could have been filled 5 fold. The queue never moved and the Japanese guy two in front never got in.
There were a lot of Canadians there.
We got a front row seat. The first set unfortunately wasnt very good and being newbies we were a bit reserved, cheering mainly when Gabi won a point.
We were a lot more vocal in the 2nd set particularly when Gabi was up our end, but it does seem judging by the posts on this thread that it was just us and another 5ish forumites that were encouraging Gabi.

We decided to get our moneys worth and stayed for Katies match which was very entertaining, but we were so frazzled we missed the final set.
My first sport is football but I had great fun analysing serve technique...Gabi was called for a foot fault early on.. Gabi rotates her standing foot about 30 degrees towards the serve line and was close to faulting again whereas Katie almost starts with her foot on the line but her action moves the foot back about a centimetre

J. Taylor

christ · Futures level

There were no end of complaints when the BBC had the nerve to move Roger off of BBC2 and put some unknown Brit girl (Harriet Dart) on instead on Monday.

www.thesun.co.uk/sport/tennis/6676516/bbc-slammed-federer-red-button-wimbledon/

Helen40 · Grand Slam Champion

christ wrote:
There were no end of complaints when the BBC had the nerve to move Roger off of BBC2 and put some unknown Brit girl (Harriet Dart) on instead on Monday.

www.thesun.co.uk/sport/tennis/6676516/bbc-slammed-federer-red-button-wimbledon/

Wow, I wrote a complaint to the Beeb yesterday because they weren't even showing the Brits on the red button, but duplicating BBC1 or 2.

Michael D · All-time great

Zed wrote:
Some observations from a newbie...
Myself and my wife traveled from Ashford in Kent (on holiday from Scotland), to Wimbledon joining the queue at 8am, nos 7485.
Now I get the Q tradition, but we never got to the ticket gate till 1pm.
Hardly any queue there, but the bottleneck seemed to be security, where not only did they scan your bag (slowly) But then checked the bag as well - my bag was empty as Id put everything on the tray...

Anyway we were there to see Gabi, so immediately queued at court 14 on the south side from about end of 2nd set in the ongoing match. Judging by the amount of Japanese the court could have been filled 5 fold. The queue never moved and the Japanese guy two in front never got in.
There were a lot of Canadians there.
We got a front row seat. The first set unfortunately wasnt very good and being newbies we were a bit reserved, cheering mainly when Gabi won a point.
We were a lot more vocal in the 2nd set particularly when Gabi was up our end, but it does seem judging by the posts on this thread that it was just us and another 5ish forumites that were encouraging Gabi.

We decided to get our moneys worth and stayed for Katies match which was very entertaining, but we were so frazzled we missed the final set.
My first sport is football but I had great fun analysing serve technique...Gabi was called for a foot fault early on.. Gabi rotates her standing foot about 30 degrees towards the serve line and was close to faulting again whereas Katie almost starts with her foot on the line but her action moves the foot back about a centimetre

J. Taylor

Thanks Zed, good to hear! Yes, I think Gabi's slow start disconcerted a lot of us, and must have made it hard for the (potential) Brit supporters court side too. I watched the second set much more and on the TV close ups her steely determined look was quite striking. She was playing well that set, but wasn't sure if the look was her normal focus, or any effects of a discordant crowd! That set as she was doing better she did seem to be getting more applause.