GAMEOVER wrote:

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christ wrote:

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The invidious thing about tennis is the higher ranked player should generally win, and usually does. And when one is ranked 100+ in the world, one is likely more often than not to meet one or more higher ranked players on the route to a WTA semi final: so not reaching a semi final is actually what is to be expected. How often has Ms Dart been seeded in the top 4 seeds?

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 If you look at the draw in Bogota the higher ranked players have not justified their seedings. There is one one seed left in the quarter finals Osorio and she would have lost in the first round if her opponent  had not retired because of severe cramp. There are 2 qualifiers in the quarter finals. In this field neither Yastremska nor Errani were seeded because of their current lowly rankings .Yastremska  has been in a WTA final recently. I think you could have had this tournament with 32 players and nobody seeded. The altitude does not make it an easy place to play.

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 id actually love to see something like this - maybe one event a year, men or womens, one of the joint events, where there are no seeds and a round by round draw. Just to shake things up a little - sort of FA Cup style... 

Lambda wrote:

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And the highest ranked woman never to have reached a WTA Tour SF is Emma. GS are independent of the Tour and 125s are challengers.

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 Wasn't Ms Raducanu the highest ranked player never to have won on the WTA tour? Something ridiculous like that.

Which would look better on a CV when a player retires and moves to another role, such as coaching, commentating, administrating etc., to have once played in a WTA QF, SF or to have been ranked in the top 100 in the world? I suspect the latter.

Peter too wrote:

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Which would look better on a CV when a player retires and moves to another role, such as coaching, commentating, administrating etc., to have once played in a WTA QF, SF or to have been ranked in the top 100 in the world? I suspect the latter.

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 Probably the latter when introducing a commentator. They often say as well former British number 1.

She has made the last 32 of arguably the most prestigious grand slam, and of course recently made the last 16 of arguably the most prestigious W1000, both points hauls of 130 and 120 greater than the 110 you would get for a WTA 250 SF (110), but her lack of WTA SF, and especially QF is a bit surprising. I know when you're 19 it's a bit different as the ceiling could be a lot higher, but her R1 opponent Avanesyan has made the QF in her first ever full WTA event.

I guess one disadvantage for Harriet is that there are a lot of W250s on clay, some at very opportune times with weak draws, especially after Wimbledon - e.g. Zidansek won a W250 last July with a run of opponents with rankings of 182, 242, 241, 193, 125, and I guess a lot of players those with QFs or SFs will have come on clay events when a lot of higher ranked players are on downtime.

You just need look at some of the QFist in those events last year:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_WTA_Tour

Min, Sanders, Bronzetti (now in top 100), Galfi, Udvardy (again, both now in top 100, but would have been far lower during those runs), Ormaechea. Minnen, Korpatsch, Bonaventure etc.

Maybe some of our players can target those type of events this year, despite the surface, although most of our players will have packed grass seasons with the WCs (in much more stacked fields) that they would probably be more inclined to rest up and then concentrate on the US season.

Harriet probably shouldn't have gone and reached that Indian Wells L16. Then she wouldn't be a top 100 player who hadn't reached a WTA SF 

As it is she is clearly newly arrived and must have been in the current top 100 for less time than anyone else there, while admittedly being a top 150 player for a fairly long time.

These not reached particular round stats are often quite interesting, maybe a bit anomalous, but sometimes not a huge amount more.

They can possibly show say lack of ambition, say re a player not targeting certain events or maybe issues at the sharp end of events. But again there is nothing to suggest lack of ambition with Harriet.

emmsie69 wrote:

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Harriet targets the highest tournaments so frequently she's scrapping into wta tournaments after withdrawals. This wasn't the case here but clay is definitely not her surface and she played someone who barely plays anything else. I do urge people to read the comments on here about Harriet and compare them with the comments about Dan who is in top 30 to see my point. It happens on here quite a bit, Men get a pass, women get hammered (Jodie excepted as she deserves it right now)

-- Edited by emmsie69 on Friday 8th of April 2022 03:41:20 PM

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 Isnt that in large part due to the fact the womens side of the board has a lot more talkative supporters, many more, and who are quite vocal and analytical of the women?

Whereas the mens side tends to be a lot more "well done, Dan" "tough luck, Cam" type...of which I readily fall into. So the men do get an easier ride. But probably also less praise

Look at the PoM stats - many more women winners than mens, not because our women are that much better but because the supporters are just that little bit more prevalent around here; the predictions game is a case in point - the womens matches are getting circa 2-3 votes more (in circa 14 or 15 placed per match) than the mens and it has always been that way; you'd anticipate in a game that everyone would just vote in all the matches, but there are always a few folks that just vote on the womens and ignore the mens. 

So I think Dan getting an easy ride (I think my comment was oh heck or some such) is just indicative of the lack of emotion some of us show for the mens game, even the biggest supporters (count me in!)