Having been involved in elite detection, it's not straight-forward though.
If you're looking at 13 year-olds, say, the player who deserves support is not necessarily the player who wins.
i.e. it doesn't matter if she was beaten by her peers.
The federation are looking for players who have potential to be high level players in 5-10 years time.
Junior tennis is a different beast - there are many juniors who have good results who I wouldn't select, and others with poorer results who I most certainly would select
Now, I'm not saying that this applies exactly to Mika, or whoever
And far be it from me to defend the LTA who, overall, I don't have much time for
But I don't think that JUST because there were others who beat her often, as a real youngster, that this is a reason that she didn't deserve support. Or that the others did deserve support.
In fact, I had a 'difference of opinion' with one parent on this forum (privately) because I didn't think their child should be part of the elite group and the parent said, vehemently, but of course they should, they're the national champion of their age or whatever. Irrelevant, I said. And said child WAS taken in the elite group. And never played tennis of any level. QED.
That said, I don't like Lewandowski, and I don't like the LTA approach of favouring those who are the in-crowd and those who are not. But it's not about results at age 12 or 13.

Coup Droit wrote:

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Coup Droit wrote:

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I know I'm one of the worst at all the rules but Mika is only 14 and when I look back at her result sheet this year (which is all in her birth year), she has had:

WC to Sunderland MD
WC to Glasgow MD
WC to Roehampton MD
WC to Foxhills MD
WC to Surbiton QD
WC to Nottingham MD
WC to Loughborough MD

Is that allowed?

Do they all not count basically because she lost in R1 in nearly all of them? 

Moreover, or in which case, no matter how much of a fan one might be of her tennis, is that really warranted? Is that just Lewandowski doing the usual?

 

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 Looking at other's profiles, I realised that Mika is by no means out on a limb with her wildcards

Isabelle Lacy has had six main draw wildcards this year (not counting Wimbly qualis which is different)

And lost in R1 of the last 4

Now, as U18 national champion, obviously Isa has a slightly higher profile.

But it's still a lot....

 

 

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To be fair to Isabelle she's only been able to have main draw WCs in Glasgow and here by using the 2 'merit' WCs that she got rewarded with for having won a match as a main draw WC in 2 events earlier in the year.

From my records, in 2023 Isabelle and Mika have received the most main draw wild cards with 6. In total 41 British women have received a total of 83 main draw wild cards this year, including Wimbledon WCs:
2 women have received 6 main draw WCs
1 has received 5 main draw WCs (Ranah)
2 have received 4 main draw WCs (Ella and Sonay)
6 have received 3 main draw WCs (Anna Brogan, Alisha Reayer, Danielle Daley, Jasmine Conway, Isabelle Cherny, Beth Grey)
10 have received 2 main draw WCs
20 have received 1 main draw WC

Including qualifying WCs, 84 British women have received 181 singles wild cards.

Obviously, not all of these are to British events.

No, TW18, that's not what I meant, although I understand why you'd say so as I'd only focused on one part of the issue. So to be clear, I mean this:

a federation should provide a pyramid of help. Lots of layers. Increasing/decreasing (depending which way up or down the pyramid you're going). Let's say five levels of help, 1-5, with 1 as the most, being 20 hours a week, say, half-individual and half group, level 2 being 10 hours a week, level 3 being 3 hours a week, level 4 being groups sessions in the holidays and level 5 being one group session in summer. As an example.

Each half-year the players should be properly re-evaluated. Which is important. But as of the start of the 6 months everyone is put in a category.

Now, it is perfectly jusitfiable, indeed more than that, to have a player at the top of the pyramid (level 1) who got knocked out in R2 of the regional championship. And to have the regional champion at level 2.
But it would never be reasonable to have the regional champion at level 5 or level 4.
So the matches, the competitions all count, they're important, but they are not the be all and end all.
And, yes, the parents of the regional champion may say that's unfair, my kid should be level 1, they won. But that's only part of it. And being level 2 will still give lots of opportunities (several of the top French players were effectively level 2 as kids). And lots of the level 1 GB children who were chosen because they were the 12 year-old champion (hence, my conversation) were never going to be top players (IMO, and which turned out to be right, in this case).
Simply giving all the funding to the 10 year-old champion, and then next year to the 11 year-old champion, is not fair. Or sensible. It doesn't take into account that one kid may have been playing for a lot longer, for instance, or has suddenly had a huge growth spurt or - most commonly - that one child plays a very defensive moonball sort of game and nothing more and refuses to change, even with level 3 help. If the federation is fair and unbiased, then using potential as a factor for funding is important. But it's still only one factor, results also matter, but don't take automatic precedence.
The key thing though is to have the mulit-layered help system, so there is some fluidity, some room for the selectors to be wrong, some room for players to change. I'm not sure the LTA has this (I don't particulalrly like what I've seen of the LTA) but certain other federations certainly do.

Fair point, Nix, but just to say that in my comment about Isa it said that she had had a lot of wildcards. I never said this was unfair.
But the number is worthy of mention. As it is for Mika. And every other player.
And although that might seem 'mean' to Isa, it is also true that, as TW18 implies, it is mean to the other girls NOT to mention it, as it is showing that - for whatever reason - certain players get a lot more wildcards than others.
Which leads to the discussion of the merits. In my comment for Isa, I wrote "Now, as U18 national champion, obviously Isa has a slightly higher profile". Which is very relevant. But it doesn't mean it's not discuss-able.

Katy has pulled out of singles and doubles.

Coup Droit wrote:

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Fair point, Nix, but just to say that in my comment about Isa it said that she had had a lot of wildcards. I never said this was unfair.
But the number is worthy of mention. As it is for Mika. And every other player.
And although that might seem 'mean' to Isa, it is also true that, as TW18 implies, it is mean to the other girls NOT to mention it, as it is showing that - for whatever reason - certain players get a lot more wildcards than others.
Which leads to the discussion of the merits. In my comment for Isa, I wrote "Now, as U18 national champion, obviously Isa has a slightly higher profile". Which is very relevant. But it doesn't mean it's not discuss-able.

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I didn't mean that it should never be mentioned as I said but Mika has been mentioned a number of times now and it becomes a short step from that to being a habit. Like the common view after Dan Evans comments that our women players don't play enough tournaments when Harriet and Jodie have played respectively one more and the same number of tournaments as he has and Jodie as well as others have had injuries which have at times prevented them from playing. 

I also took from the conversation that somehow because Isa hadn't had many wins that it proved that she didn't deserve them without acknowledging the context of why she might not have had many wins. 

I just feel a bit protective of all our young players because they are very young, even Emma is still young, and they have a lot of exposure and pressure at such a young age. 

Of course it's interesting to have these conversations and I'm not trying to shut them down but I'd prefer that they focused on the LTA rather than individual players. Just my personal thoughts. 

Do so hope that this isn't a serious one. I don't think poor Katy is going to have the stomach to work her way through another 6-monther.....

And, Nix, I do take your point, honestly, but I don't think you can just talk about the LTA is general without mentioning the specific cases. And it's not at all an insult to the player if they've had a lot of wildcards, it's a comment on the system, which may indeed be a positive comment. But you need the specifics for the general to make sense.