I have also long questioned the supposed general mental fraility that some attach to the Brits. Indeed, without looking back through matches, my impression this year is of Brits more often than not being on the right side of dogged well fought out wins.

Re Katie B, we shall see if she appears in Ecuador ( the ITF site generally shuts up shop on late withdrawals ) and if she does, then how she shapes up.

foobarbaz wrote:

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HarryGem and flamingowings, this seems a little harsh given our top British women re-jigged their clay season preparation to play in the BJKCup tie against Mexico. So in this Charlotteville event, they've being competing against players who have been playing on the clay for a month already. Boulter has done well to get to the semi's, especially if she's been carrying a slight injury. She deserves credit for giving it a go against her Chinese opponent, but if in the match it becomes clear that the injury will not allow her to prevail, then the professional thing to do is retire from the match and not make the injury worse. The Brits haven't been doing too bad this year already, with both Swan and Burridge winning W25 tourneys, the former beating the top150 up-and-coming Mexican Zarazua in a proper shootout in the semi in that event. Over the last 2 years our players haven't had many wildcards around the world, and have suffered in the rankings and their development accordingly. Anyone can pick up an injury, especially at the start of what has been a fractured season to date.   

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 Perhaps I should have made myself clear. I meant main draw wild cards. But no I don't think it is that harsh. For me Wimbledon is the top tournament in the game and I'm not really in favour of handing out free entry to it just because the player is British unless it is well deserved.

Of course injuries can happen and I wasn't questioning Katie B playing and trying more the fact that there didn't seem to be a proper respect to the injury and giving it time to recover. However, I gather she has withdrawn in  any case. If so this is completely the right thing to do.

I'm also not questioning anything in regard to GB player's mental approach to matches. However, I am much more interested in whether there is a LTA involvement in the mental and physical health and training to support GB players. Of course I'm prepared to admit I'm ignorant as to what goes on in that respect. I'm interested because someone I know was heavily involved in the physical and mental training at a Premier League football club. What they told me about the preparation of their players seemed to be applicable to tennis. Each player had their own IPad onto which was prescribed their own unique training schedule. All training was monitored with electronic monitoring systems that allowed them to assess for eg not just hear rate and recovery but stress on the muscular make up of the body and many other things. The result was first very few injuries and those injuries that did occur were cleared up much more quickly.

Maybe this is done already but the cost would be quite a lot for lower ranked players, on top of an expensive sport, and it would seem to me to be a good use of LTA money. But then again maybe they are already doing this.