Week 39 - WTA Premier 5 ($2.7M) - Wuhan, China Hard

Ace Ventura · Tennis legend

Week 39 - WTA Premier 5 ($2.7M) - Wuhan, China Hard

indiana · Tennis legend

Coup Droit wrote:
Yes. The problem with Emma is that she's only 15.

A whole heap of things can change/go wrong between now and getting into the WTA top 100.

Whereas the batch of girls you've mentioned are close to getting there.

And Joko was only 200 or so on her 21st birthday. And 160 or so on her 22nd birthday. And about 100 on her 23rd.

So the batch of girls we have are pretty similar.

And go back further to the eventually top 50 players, Anne Keothavong and Elena Baltacha and their rankings over earlier years and plenty examples behind our shores. I think a bit too much of a rush to relatively write some players off in some quarters. My own best guess is that 3 of the 5 will at least make the top 100 in time ( the two Katies plus one ).

And you are so right about Emma. Just 15 and so much can happen and does happen to players in the years she has coming up. All the very best to her, and clearly as of now she looks a great prospect, but at least for a good time yet anyone putting over much pressure on her beyond herself and these close to her ( arguable even about them ) deserves to be shot.

-- Edited by indiana on Thursday 27th of September 2018 02:27:02 AM

indiana · Tennis legend

And another thing, while I am on a nocturnal roll, regarding specifically Katie Boulter.

ROSAMUND says that having recently missed out on entering the top 100 she is now likely to go down due to points dropping off.

She currently has 571 points. She only has 48 points due to drop off by year end so even if adding nothing more this year she wouldn't drop by by very much. And much more significantly she only has a grand total of 72 points to drop off between now and the start of April and of course a close season to refocus on early 2019. With her great spring and summer some may have forgotten how relatively slow her season was to get going. That's actually quite a window before April to potentially rise up the rankings from her current WR 108.

JonH · All-time great

Just a word on this event, started with 16 of top 17 in world, last 8 features one seed (16th), 2 qualifiers and a wild card. Big opportunity for someone at this level. Opportunity missed for many others including jo

flamingowings · All-time great

JonH wrote:
Just a word on this event, started with 16 of top 17 in world, last 8 features one seed (16th), 2 qualifiers and a wild card. Big opportunity for someone at this level. Opportunity missed for many others including jo

Except that 16th seed is Barty so...

It's also the end of the season. Players are tired, injury prone.

ROSAMUND · Futures level

flamingowings wrote:
JonH wrote:
Just a word on this event, started with 16 of top 17 in world, last 8 features one seed (16th), 2 qualifiers and a wild card. Big opportunity for someone at this level. Opportunity missed for many others including jo
Except that 16th seed is Barty so...
It's also the end of the season. Players are tired, injury prone.

Unlike some of the players Ashleigh Barty is still playing well and was also runner up here last year. Re Jo and missed opportunity I don't think the opportunity was there with the 1st round opponent she got. For some reason or other having had 3 good wins over top players since Wimbledon once Jo got ill in New Haven she is struggling to find any form. Further to my comments about future prospects of players, earlier on the year when she was having all those wins I thought Gabi Taylor was going somewhere. I even thought she might have been worth giving a shot as the 2nd player in the singles in the Fed Cup against Japan. However we always seem to have a play safe mentality and it was apparent from the start that she would only get a game if either Jo or Heather could not play.

Ace Ventura · Tennis legend

ROSAMUND wrote:
flamingowings wrote:
JonH wrote:
Just a word on this event, started with 16 of top 17 in world, last 8 features one seed (16th), 2 qualifiers and a wild card. Big opportunity for someone at this level. Opportunity missed for many others including jo
Except that 16th seed is Barty so...
It's also the end of the season. Players are tired, injury prone.
Unlike some of the players Ashleigh Barty is still playing well and was also runner up here last year. Re Jo and missed opportunity I don't think the opportunity was there with the 1st round opponent she got. For some reason or other having had 3 good wins over top players since Wimbledon once Jo got ill in New Haven she is struggling to find any form. Further to my comments about future prospects of players, earlier on the year when she was having all those wins I thought Gabi Taylor was going somewhere. I even thought she might have been worth giving a shot as the 2nd player in the singles in the Fed Cup against Japan. However we always seem to have a play safe mentality and it was apparent from the start that she would only get a game if either Jo or Heather could not play.

I think a lot were excited by that run and a fair few were thinking she could have played ahead of Heather in Fed Cup. It's very impressive to win 25 of 26 matches, but the level was a lot lower than her current ranking and I don't think there was a top 200 win amongst that lot, one or two fringe top 200 if any.

Since the French Open she is 2-8 against top 200 and if you include the likes of Dart, Lykina, MDM, JJ Lu etc. who were in and around the top 200 at the time then it is 4-11 since retiring at 5 games all in Australia, 6-11 overall if you include the 2 US WCs which were pretty generous draws. She's obviously had injury and illness issues these past 6 months, but it will be interesting to see how she gets on in the coming weeks going back to the area and level where she had success 7 or 8 months ago.

indiana · Tennis legend

By the way just going back, a few words I meant to say earlier about Katy Dunne.

I do understand we often talk relatively and here rather off tournament topic we had been talking about players reaching high rankings or at least top 100. But I DO think that it is too harsh to say that "Katy Dunne won't amount to much". It's IMO a harsh and unneccessary step on from the old journeyman/woman thing which I am not a great fan of but is fairly commonly used.

Katy, I actually agree, is very unlikely to get near the top 100 ( and it could have been left at that ) but she has still got herself close to the top 200 ranked women in the world, pushing that CH up a fair bit this year after a few years of plateauing around the 300 mark.

She amounts to quite a lot in tennis and certainly from what I gather beyond it.

PockyTastic · Futures level

indiana wrote:
By the way just going back, a few words I meant to say earlier about Katy Dunne.

I do understand we often talk relatively and here rather off tournament topic we had been talking about players reaching high rankings or at least top 100. But I DO think that it is too harsh to say that "Katy Dunne won't amount to much". It's IMO a harsh and unneccessary step on from the old journeyman/woman thing which I am not a great fan of but is fairly commonly used.

Katy, I actually agree, is very unlikely to get near the top 100 ( and it could have been left at that ) but she has still got herself close to the top 200 ranked women in the world, pushing that CH up a fair bit this year after a few years of plateauing around the 300 mark.

She amounts to quite a lot in tennis and certainly from what I gather beyond it.

Im glad someone else commented on this as I was too angry to say anything. Katy is a player who clearly loves tennis (her infectiously positive centre court debut really highlights this) and has seemingly made every effort to maximise her game despite the limitations it may have. Yes it does not seem that likely that shell break the top 100 in singles but to use such language to devalue her both on court and probably unintentionally off the court is uncalled for. Tennis players get enough negativity via social media from trolls, lets not add to it without thoughtless comments. Im not saying we should be blindly optimistic and not able to criticise, your assessment of her chances of going much further are probably fair but please can we think carefully about the language we use. We know players and their families sometimes read this forum.

Peter too · Tennis legend

I remember being impressed by Katy's fighting qualities and athleticism in her 2nd ITF tournament when she nearly removed a seed. Since then she has won around half a dozen 10/15K tournaments and reached half a dozen $25K finals and several 60/80K quarter finals. She would need to push that up a level to regular $25K wins plus occasional $60K finals or wins to reach the top 100. She seemed to stall for a few years in her early 20s before pushing on again in the last year or so towards the top 200. Top 200 is reachable and possibly top 150 but unless there is a late surge up the rankings she is running out of time to go much higher.

Ace Ventura · Tennis legend

Katy is currently the 223rd best female player in the world and the 8th highest ranked in her country, so that in itself relatively speaking, is excellent. She has performed live on the BBC platform and on arguably the most famous and prestigious tennis court in the world, something many of us could only dream of doing. It has come across as dismissive and in bad taste, but I didn't mean any harm or malice in that comment - I was just saying it in the context of the conversation at the time which was about players to be excited about and those able to perform around Jo's current level or higher.

On a hardcore British tennis forum where there is interest in unranked players in overseas 15k's, then Katy is clearly going to be a big deal and get more attention because she is currently operating at a much higher level which is few and far between in this country, but I was just meaning that the general British sports fan isn't going to have heard of her, whereas they would with Konta, Watson and Robson, likewise neither would an overseas tennis fan who primarily just follows the slams and main tours.