Nooooooo Naomi loses both points on serve 7-8*

Shame, shame ,shame. But GREAT match.

124:117 to Naomi on points, but Babos wins despite failing to score more points than Naomi in any of the three sets!

Re Phil's TB question,  well for this year I make it that Timea was 5 - 4 up in TBs won, now 7 - 4.  Naomi was  21 - 11 up, now  21 - 13.

Looking at Naomi's activity for the year not only highlighted the large number of TBs she'd been involved in, but even more than I recalled, just how many tight matches she's played through the year, and I'd say overall won more than her fair share until just recently..

I found just from the US Open on, really interesting.  In these 8 tournaments, her losses in all 8 have been to top 200 players and all but one were pretty tight or very tight matches.  In that same period she has won 5 matches against top 200 players and again all but one of these matches could be called tight or very tight.

Chronologically from her exit from the US Open to Foretz-Gacon up to this loss to Babos, the losses, again all to top 200 players ( 2 to top 100 players ) have been :

WR 116 :  6 - 3   6 - 7 (6)   6 - 3     ( US Open :  Foretz-Gacon )  

WR   99 :  7 - 5   6 - 7 (6)   6 - 3     ( Shrewsbury :  Heather )

WR   52 :  6 - 4   6 - 2

WR 158 :  3 - 6   6 - 3   7 - 5

WR 169 :   6 - 3   6 - 7 (4)   6 - 4

WR 199 :  7 - 6 (11)   7 - 6 (4)

WR 154 :  6 - 3   2 - 6   7 - 5

WR 154 :  5 - 7   7 - 6 (4)   7 - 6 (7)

And in that same 8 tournament period, her 5 wins against top 200 players, all actually top 140 players, with 2 against top 100 players were :

WR 140 :  6 - 4   5 - 7   6 - 3            ( US Open :  Chang )

WR   89 :  6 - 3   3 - 6   7 - 6 (5)      ( Barrois )

WR   81 :  6 - 0   6 - 2                      ( Rus )

WR 110 :  6 - 4   7 - 6 (2)

WR 108 :  6 - 7 (6)   6 - 4   7 - 6 (5)

So, she has certainly been involved in a lot of real scraps with top 200 players recently, and in a period when she has moved to a new CH of WR 200 and should hopefully go higher in Mondays' rankings, she's actually been so close on quite a number of occasions to getting quite a lot more ranking points.

Considering I would imagine the vast majority of matches are generally won in 2 sets, I wonder if Naomi claims overtime    The fact that she has a strong serve no doubt adds to her number of TBs and tight matches, but still...

One thing for sure, Naomi is well worth her place in the top 200 !    

There endeth my Naomi Broady thesis.   

-- Edited by indiana on Thursday 17th of November 2011 10:03:07 PM

Thanks for that, Indiana, very interesting. I doubt we've had a GB no. 5 this strong on either the men's or the women's side for quite a long time!

It's also quite interesting that the year that ended with Anne K aged 21 (the same age as Naomi is now) was 2004, the year she (Anne) ended as GB no. 1 ranked 180. Naomi is likely to end 2011 ranked just 10-20 places below that - can you imagine how much 'the next big thing in British women's tennis" type of media coverage Naomi would have been getting if we didn't have Elena, Anne, Hev and Laura at the moment! In some ways, she's lucky to be able to be able to develop with less of the spotlight on her, but in other ways I guess she might have found it easier to get sponsorship in those days!

And they take it. GSM to Broadenovic 6 - 1 3 - 6 10 - 4