She seems a very levelheaded girl for her age and in the past, I believe a lot of the British players did not commit enough to pursue their tennis dream. So good luck to her.. Roger Federer stopped going to school at an early age and you could argue that he might not have had the career he did if he had stayed in full-time education. Everybody is different and some people would need to put the extra hours in early where some people could go and play college tennis for a few years and up the level to become a top pro when required where some other people would not be able to do this as that would be too late. But on the flipside for every 1 Coco gauff there are 100 Maria Shishkinas does any body remember her?
-- Edited by Deucebag on Sunday 28th of January 2024 08:10:24 PM
i saw Hannah play at Wimbledon qualies, and to be fair I would have guessed she was 18, not 14. Fingers crossed she will be still there and challenging for the top in four years time.
I don't remember Shishkina, but to be fair there are more than 1000 like her - the pyramid is wide at he bottom of the pro rankings.
(And you edited out the typo that was to be my first comment)
i saw Hannah play at Wimbledon qualies, and to be fair I would have guessed she was 18, not 14. Fingers crossed she will be still there and challenging for the top in four years time.
I don't remember Shishkina, but to be fair there are more than 1000 like her - the pyramid is wide at he bottom of the pro rankings.
(And you edited out the typo that was to be my first comment)
Yes I seen the gauff/golf typo and thought to edit quick before some banter was thrown my way.
I also seen her play at Shrewsbury for the first time and her level of tennis is far beyond anything else I have seen in this country previously at that age.
Shishkina trained at the IMG academy and regularly was seen practicing with Sharapova. she was by far the best player in the world at 12&14 winning the orange bowl younger age groups well before her time.
Nick Bollettieri said she would walk across broken glass if she had to get the win with her lazer like groundstrokes etc. then she signed a multi million dollar deal with under armour and shortly after that she had problems with her wrists and after surgery on both she never recovered and barely reached inside the top 1000.
You just never know either way but Im excited to watch her journey.
That's the thing with very real prospects at age 13/14. So much can happen further down the line at 16/17/18 that can completely derail the journey they were on. I like many others are so keen and impatient to see Hannah leap up those rankings and start challenging the best players in the world. But of course the most important thing is that she is healthy, happy, enjoying playing tennis and can continue to improve her excellent progress at her own pace and timing. Please don't let too many big money endorsements rush and ruin her. Plenty of time for success.
How does this impact on the number of senior events she's allowed to play?
As a 15 year she can play 10 events and is not restricted to what those events are as she was as a 14 year old. Her 3 WCs can be taken at any event up to WTA250 and 1 of those 3 can be taken at a WTA1000 or WTA500.
She can get up to 4 more tournaments and up to 3 more WCs if she improves her ranking to be a direct acceptance into a Grand Slam or WTA1000 qualifying or main draw, has a year-end Junior Top 5 ranking or is a singles finalist in a Junior Grand Slam or ITF Junior Worlds.