Francesca pootling along nicely, 6-3

Fran is in that important transitional phase. Anything less than a final at $15K now seems like an underperformance. $25K wins have been hard to come by so far, but that is surely where she will soon be aiming much more of her efforts towards.
She suffers a bit from the Mandy factor. LTA may well give her WC to GB events, but they're never going to be on her preferred surface, becasue we don't ever hold clay events any more. Do you take the chance at a higher level on hard courts even when the chances are you won't gain too much from it, or try to get into continental clay $25K? $25K in Europe on clay are the most competitive events at any level anywhere in the world. To what extent do you perhaps have to bite the bullet and understand that you'll suffer for a while on hard courts, but it is necessary for your all around development? Is diving in to LTA $25K on hard the best way to develop a better all court game? Should you try for $15K on hard somewhere, or stick to clay.
All these questions and more are the pressing questions now for Francesca and her team at this juncture.

Nice routine result today, the next steps of the career will start to demand more in the short to medium term.

R2: JONES, Francesca (GBR) 2 455 [17yo JCH=31] v ZUGER, Joanne (SUI) WC UNR [17yo JCH=92]

-- Edited by Peter too on Tuesday 21st of August 2018 03:03:33 PM

Fran comes through 6-3 6-3
But it was 7 breaks to 4, so not so convincing

Beat me to it!

Just keeps on chugging along

With provision of $15K (or $10K when that was the bottom rung) for next year currently at about half of the last decade or so Fran should be well served by having played so much pro tennis already, whilst still a junior. Hopefully she won't get caught in the space between Transistion and $25K with effectively nowhere to go, which is going to happen to so many in 2019.

Just keep winning is, I suppose, the simplified goal.

Francesca's latest endeavour pursuant of that goal has now commenced, poorly, *1-4