It has been a horrendous year for Mimi with only 4 pro wins to her name and no pro wins against a top 600 player outside of grass court play. I had hoped the wins she got in her first college tournament might have given her some confidence as some of those wins were against players that would be ranked in, at least, the top 400 if they played on the pro tour regularly. I thought her difficulties this year may be that she is still trying to work out to play top 250 players, but she got plenty of wins against players of that ranking last year. It may be just the pressure of trying to defend the points and is trying too hard and not letting her natural game flow. Her game will always be one of fine margins and more errors than most.
This match had added pressure and emotions, being against one of her Duke team mates and likely will be used by coaches as one data point to decide playing order when they come to team play in the New Year. Mimi says she doesn't mind where she plays in the team line up, but the pressure of competing against a team mate for your place in the line up will affect people in different ways. She's also come from a relative unknown in the US to having a lot of attention and expectation put on her since her run a couple of weeks ago.
While she has not been winning at senior level, Mimi seems to have been set quite a scheduue with the individual college matches, senior competition in Mexico and California before here in neighbouring South Carolina, while evidenrly getting straight back into class work in between.
FWIW, with the overall senior form Lambda alludes to, with Mimi due to drop 108 ( net 106 ) points on 26/10, from last year's Birmingham and Wrexham tournaments, she will be out of the top 500 unless she picks up quite a few points elsewhere by then.
Mika also faces 100 points dropping off, which is probably more of a current issue given her priorities. And she is not playing Wrexham, with speculation that she may be off to Asia.
