LordBrownof wrote:

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What do you think, if anything in particular, Lisa has done to secure such a dramatic rise?

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She first kind of broke through when she reached the London Cumberland 10K SFs in Sep 2009 and hasn't really looked back since, so while this is just a guess, I imagine she always had it in her, but late 2009 gave her more confidence and/or the impetus to work even harder and set higher targets to aim for or whatever, the kind of building blocks that can make all the difference.

It has been very noticeable that virtually whenever she gets half-decent draws (e.g. Wimbledon qualifying - which wasn't bad for a Wimbledon qualifying draw, albeit very tough for someone ranked at the level she was at the time - Wrexham 25K, etc), she makes sure she takes full advantage of them. That's what we always hope Brits will do but often they don't manage it.

She also seems to grow into her ranking, i.e. beating the people she should beat and managing the odd upset but losing quite convincingly to those ranked well above her, then learning from it and being far more competitive with them once her ranking gets closer to theirs. That sounds like it should be normal for most players, but she just seems to play at a standard more consistent with her improving ranking than most - less huge upsets but, more importanly, less complete meltdowns too. (that's been my impression anyway, I haven't checked that against ITF so it might be wrong!)

Her ranking is going to be a bit vulnerable when the 50 Wimbledon fqr points come off, since you can always end up facing the female equivalent of a Mahut in qr1. However, she has no counting scores due to come off until the Astana SF drops off in late April and only 23 points coming off before Wimbledon, so she's got every chance of being ranked high enough to get a main draw WC by then. That would be great but then of course there's even more chance of drawing a really good player in R1 and not picking up many points.

Edit: As Indiana implied, you'd expect all this to be the kind of steady progress the LTA would be crying out for, even if the numbers don't quite fit.

-- Edited by steven on Wednesday 2nd of February 2011 06:34:00 PM

I would be quite interested, certainly at the senior singles level, do the LTA allow any leeway outside selection on the methodology they have set up ?

If not, assuming that that methodology is at all sensible, that can basically explain why noone gets in that doesn't really deserve it.

I do though think that once you have selected by methodolgy you should sit back and be prepared to maybe add one or two more taking account of such as time and rate of progress and say injuries ( which I think have been allowed for before ).

As long as they themselves look at this openmindedly and fairly there should be no accusations of favouritism.  

I've seen Lisa play a couple of times and to me it was quite an accurate assessment.

Interesting discussion here on Lisa so thought I'd offer my tuppence worth on a few things.

I think Steven and Phil are very close to the mark. As Lisa's 'local' paper here in Cambridge we've obviously been following her progress closely and knew that she was a very good player and would almost certainly be a regular member of the tour. But like all young sporting talent, you never know just how good they're going to be until they actually start producing the results. You get an idea by talking to them though and Lisa has always struck me as a mature, motivated and extremely committed individual and in any sport that's a big part of the battle.

I'd say that the 2009 nationals provided the springboard for her. I remember talking to her after her semi-final loss to Joss Rae and she commented on how much she had learned in playing someone who, in her words, was a better and more experienced player. She'd had her chances though and now realised what was needed to compete with players of that standard.

Since then she hasn't looked back. Her performances in those ITFs in Cumberland, and Shrewsbury I think, backed that up and as Steven said, seemed to give her the confidence she needed to string wins together. I hadn't seen her play before Wimbledon qualifying so I can't comment on how much her game changed and improved but from what Lisa said it sounded like increased confidence/experience was a big factor in her results.

As for how she plays - the last time I saw her was at Wimbledon qualies so not sure how much has changed but I wouldn't say her style or form was 'weird'. Lisa hits flat off both wings and tends to do so more often than many players but I don't see what's especially weird about that. It's an effective style after all and I would imagine that as she continues to climb the rankings she and her coach will work on developing her game further in any case.

embee wrote:

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As for how she plays - the last time I saw her was at Wimbledon qualies so not sure how much has changed but I wouldn't say her style or form was 'weird'.

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Thanks for adding all the info you did. Re. the 'weird' comment that the blogger in California made, I got the impression that they just found it odd how many UEs Lisa made in the 1st set before largely cutting them out in the 2nd. That's what they seemed to be saying, anyway.

However, if they find it weird to see a player having one bad set followed by a good one, they can't have watched much tennis - and certainly not much women's tennis, where scores like 6-0 0-6 6-1 (far more extreme than the score in Lisa's match) don't seem to be that uncommon!

 

steven wrote:

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embee wrote:

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As for how she plays - the last time I saw her was at Wimbledon qualies so not sure how much has changed but I wouldn't say her style or form was 'weird'.

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Thanks for adding all the info you did. Re. the 'weird' comment that the blogger in California made, I got the impression that they just found it odd how many UEs Lisa made in the 1st set before largely cutting them out in the 2nd. That's what they seemed to be saying, anyway.

However, if they find it weird to see a player having one bad set followed by a good one, they can't have watched much tennis - and certainly not much women's tennis, where scores like 6-0 0-6 6-1 (far more extreme than the score in Lisa's match) don't seem to be that uncommon!

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Ok, that blog comment makes a bit more sense then - still a little odd though because as you say those kind of turnarounds are not exactly uncommon in the women's game.