One of the worst draws possible for Katie as Jil is at a career high having won WTA Prague the other week. In the top 100 and won a big title on clay - she'd have been a prime candidate for a MDWC had this have been Wimbledon.

You'd like to think Heather would have a good chance there, but you never know these days, and her first match on clay.

Harriet withdrew as mentioned on the Saint-Gaudens thread.

Bains was a fair way off getting in. Her ranking was around 250 at the Q cut off a few weeks ago and the French Open is still a 96 women qualifying draw, so circa 200 was the cut off. In fact, Marino replaced Dart with a 201 ranking.

Swan has been constantly losing to those in the top 250 for about 9 months now, so might have struggled with most of this field - and wouldn't have got in if they used this weeks ranking (just as a gauge), but yes, a very unfortunate draw and she will be a big underdog. A QWC would have been nice to ease her way into it and to pick up some decent points / money in the process. Still, not many will expect her to do much given her opponent, so it is kind of a free hit and if she does lose, she can get back home and have more time prepping for Surbiton.

Edit - quite interesting that at the Q cut off about a month ago, Teichmann's ranking to get in was 146 and Katie's 174, so just 28 places between them, but now there's over 120 and one would have been safely in the main draw and the other just outside quals.

-- Edited by Ace Ventura on Monday 20th of May 2019 04:17:20 PM

I was looking at Teichmann's results - one thing that may be in Katie Swan's favour is the fact that the massive jump in Teichmann's ranking has in part been because she won the Prague Open, a hugely impressive result for her of course, and she clearly went on a wonderful run there, but her other results aren't quite at that level, so maybe she isn't as formidable as perhaps I first thought. Other people on this forum are for more experts than me, and I often find myself corrected by those who know more however.

Although I was aware she was jumping up the rankings at quite a pace, I hadn't realised how much of it was down to just one superb tournament. 298 of her 659 points come from Prague alone, which means of course that she has 361 points from all her other events - Katie has 279 for the last 12 months, so take out Prague and the gap isn't that huge.

Regardless of form in the last few months, Katie really looks like a top quality player to me, and I will boldly stick my neck out and say that in a couple of years time, I think she will join Katie B and Harriet long term in the top 100 - I think all three have great overall games and are heading to the top echelons of tennis (and by that I mean the top 100). I know only time will tell, but I feel that the overall games of all three already look really good, and if they can stay injury free, then I think the more that they play top players, the more they will improve and get to and have a long run in the top 100.

(Before anyone corrects me, I am aware that Katie B and Harriet have already briefly made the top 100, but there is a difference between making the top 100 and almost immediately drifting out of that ranking, and actually reaching that level and becoming a permanent fixture at Grand Slams and on the main tour.)

It would be great if Katie S could establish herself in the top 100 as that looked to be an absolute minimum expectation 2 or 3 years ago, and her average rank of 118 in the predictions league shows that you are certainly not alone in believing in her potential Andy. She has had foot and back issues in that time, but it's been such a disappointing 9 months, never mind few months, and pretty much everyone she has faced at this kind of level since Hibino at the US Open, she has lost to, as shown in the below link:

www.tennisabstract.com/cgi-bin/wplayer.cgi

She has (generally) been able to beat those ranked 300+, but there's just no real good win in that 9 month period and some of the scorelines are particularly concerning like 2 and 3 losses to the likes of Ce (#442 at the time) and Albie (#315) recently. She also lost to Cepede Royg, McHale, Watson, Rybakina and Tomova who will all be in FO qualifying, and to fall outside the top 200 despite having had 5 MDWCs at 100k+ level in the past 12 months, is disappointing. 129 of those 279 points you referenced were before and during Wimbledon (almost half), so that just shows how grim its's been since then, and she'll do well to avoid slipping further by the time Wimbledon is over.

She comes across well and is always so enthusiastic at the Fed Cup and seems to really appreciate just being part of the team, so hopefully she can realise her potential, and even just from a marketing perspective, she could be a reasonably big name in British sport if she can put some results together, but I personally think it's quite hard to get excited over what has been such a lacklustre lengthy period.

Betway have opened the odds with Teichmann 1/10, Swan 6/1 and there's a few other bookies that have Katie at 7.3, which is even longer than 6/1 when converted into fractions, and while odds are there to broken, it does kind of tell you where their respective games are at the moment.

 

Ace Ventura wrote:

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Heather and Katie both on first tomorrow at 9am UK.

A few surprise results today and 5 seeds out. Liu-Vickery is the last remaining match today and that is deep into the deciding set.

Edit - it's great how you can stream every qualifying match. Just watched the last few games of the aforementioned match with Vickery coming through 12-10 in the final set tie break, just shy of 3 hours, both having multiple MPs.

-- Edited by Ace Ventura on Tuesday 21st of May 2019 07:30:48 PM

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 Do I need to subscribe to Eurosport player to access all the courts? I kind of feel that if I already have a package with all the Eurosport channels on my tv, red button options should be included...

Katie *1-2
Heather 2-0*

Heather takes first set 6-2, and Katie competing well from the bits I have watched, recovered an early break and now 4-4* and has an opening here.

-- Edited by Ace Ventura on Wednesday 22nd of May 2019 08:38:54 AM