Well, South Korea are certainly helping to fast track some of their promising juniors onto the ranking ladder with these 15k tournaments. That's Kim Cherry's 2nd counter in two weeks, and even if she subsequently keeps getting knocked out by Emily, so what, one more counter and she has her ranking...
Emily is still playing doubles this week too - she has been playing singles and doubles week in and week out for some time now... Joanna Garland is not playing doubles this week, so Emily's partner is Hanna Chang (USA), who is the #1 singles seed, and between them the top two players in the singles draw this week are the 2nd seeds in the doubles.
Also to note that Joanna is in the top half of the singles draw, and seeded to meet Hanna (20 yrs CR:486) in the QF.
I've been doing a count. If Emily follows this week with two further weeks in South Korea, and she is on the entry lists, she will have competed in 34 ITF singles tournaments inside a year, from the Buenos Aires 15K in mid September last year.
As said plus loads of doubles, and maybe more particularly lots of travel to some far flung spots.
Is she under pressure for certain targets to be met re ranking for this sky sponsorships maybe?
She is under undoubted pressure to deliver. Her scheduling and the alacrity with which she has produced blogs on sky sports after each of her 15k wins, even though the second was only 2 weeks after the first, is evidence enough of that (as well as her attempts to show in good light her efforts so far this year). And indeed Emily is now up to 522 in the live rankings, largely through her intensive scheduling, and I expect her next blog when she breaks into the top 500, which I imagine she will hope to do before leaving Korea. After that she will need to readjust her sights, probably try again at 25ks, where ABB notes she has been very unsuccessful so far, and let's hope have a rest before her elbow niggle turns into something more serious.
It is noteworthy that she has beaten very few players around her current ranking so far, most have been MUCH lower ranked.
Events here proactively moved indoors before start of play.
Emily is 0-2 indoors in 2018, but both were at $25K level, so hard to make a judgement from a loss to WR381, and an unranked ringer in Michaella Kajicek!