Weeks 3-4 - Australian Open (hard) - women

indiana · Tennis legend

Weeks 3-4 - Australian Open (hard) - women

tony_orient · ATP qualifying

Regarding Laura's ball toss, I mentioned right at the start of qualifying that she has changed to a much higher ball toss this season. Given her limited preperation it's unsurprising that she struggled with it at times. It has been an issue for a while though and something she needs to sort out.

Actually Laura's serve was quite reliable in qualifying with only about 5 doubles over three matches but even at the start of today's match she was double faulting regularly.

daisy · County player

Just very sad none of the 4 made it through to R2; there were some opportunities there, especially for Bally, but perhaps injury/illness woes contributed to how the other 3 fared.

:(

RJA · Hall of fame

indiana wrote:
And the media having reported the encouraging signs of 4 in the main draw, I do hope they do not go overboiard now with doom and gloom. It wasn't a good day, but in context the draws were generally tough and there were certain issues that I referred to earlier.

I doubt the media will go overboard. British girls losing in some foreign tournament is not something that will get them worked up. Naturally if it happened at Wimbledon it would be portrayed as a catastrophe.

Maza1987 · Challenger level

WELL, DARN, WE GOT A CAN OF WHOOP A** OPENED ON US LAST NIGHT!

*crawls over to Andy's forum*

Ratty · County player

Yadda, yadda, doom and gloom, cue shedloads of agonized navel-gazing.

This might cheer you up - a result from R1 of the Australian Open in 2009:

Victoria Azarenka bt Petra Kvitova 6-2 6-1

Kvitova was nearly 19 at the time, a couple of months older than Heather Watson is now, and nearly a year older than Laura Robson is now.

Azarenka was ranked 16 at the time - 13 places lower than she is now, and 2 places lower than Jankovic is now.

steven · Tennis legend

Ratty wrote:
Yadda, yadda, doom and gloom, cue shedloads of agonized navel-gazing.
This might cheer you up - a result from R1 of the Australian Open in 2009:
Victoria Azarenka bt Petra Kvitova 6-2 6-1
Kvitova was nearly 19 at the time, a couple of months older than Heather Watson is now, and nearly a year older than Laura Robson is now.
Azarenka was ranked 16 at the time - 13 places lower than she is now, and 2 places lower than Jankovic is now.

Isn't this the kind of stat you usually rubbish? LOL Interesting though - adds to the impression that when Azarenka is good, she's very, very good (even if the rest of the time, ...)

Maza1987 · Challenger level

Somebody has clearly hacked into Ratty's account. lol.

steven · Tennis legend

I imagine it was meant to be ironic (i.e. that's the kind of 'sad,' looking on the bright side post Ratty would expect from one of us)

Not wishing to disappoint then wink our former US Open junior champ can also take heart from the fact that senior US Open Champ to be Sam Stosur lost to Azarenka by the same 1 & 0 score as Hev in Miami, also in 2009. Can't have done the Aussie too much long-lasting harm!

(of course, I'm sure Ratty can provide plenty of examples of players getting bagelled by Vika who did not go on to be world-beaters ...)

Ratty · County player

It wasn't intended to be a "stat", and certainly not ironic.

Rather a polite hint that one shouldn't read too much into single results, particularly in the women's game, where the scoring system and the weakness of the serves (compared to men) mean that apparent thumpings are handed out on a regular basis.

steven · Tennis legend

Ratty wrote:
It wasn't intended to be a "stat", and certainly not ironic.

Rather a polite hint that one shouldn't read too much into single results, particularly in the women's game, where the scoring system and the weakness of the serves (compared to men) mean that apparent thumpings are handed out on a regular basis.

Ah! Well that makes sense and I'd have to agree with you.

philwrig · Hall of fame

I like Neil Harman, but he has headlined his piece about today's performances as 'Andy Murray last Brit standing after first-day woe'. Neil is one of the kinder journalists so imagine what the reaction would have been if ithis result had happened at Wimby.

Here's another report . http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2012/jan/16/australian-open-2012.

It makes reference to a chronic hip problem Bally has. Had anyone known about that before ? Because it was news to me.

-- Edited by philwrig on Monday 16th of January 2012 06:33:44 PM

indiana · Tennis legend

Ratty wrote:
It wasn't intended to be a "stat", and certainly not ironic.

Rather a polite hint that one shouldn't read too much into single results, particularly in the women's game, where the scoring system and the weakness of the serves (compared to men) mean that apparent thumpings are handed out on a regular basis.

Yes, good point. As you suggest, if one woman has generally got the upper hand they will often win the vast bulk of the games, and the lesser player on the day generally hasn't got serve "free points" to help put a few games on the board and make it look pretty decent as often with the men.

While there is apparently no doubt that Azarenka was playing well and had real control of her encounter with Heather, as I said earlier from the points scored ( 56 vs 31 ) it is fairly clear that Heather has consistently got two or three points in games, but it ended up 6 - 1 6 - 0.

Shows as you say, the harshness in a way sometimes of the scoring ststem ( though a scoring system I love incidentally bringing such a range of minor and more imporatant pivotal points ), but also looks to have been a very focussed display by Azarenka.

Priesty · Challenger level

I think the only truly disappointing result was from Bally - although it would have been nice to see Laura and Heather win a few more games. Then again no-one can play well all the time, just hope this is a one-off and they bring in better results in the near future.

indiana · Tennis legend

I heard Judy Murray saying on the radio that Laura was on crutches a couple of weeks or so ago.

It does put a bit of perspective to her saying more than once that she came into the Aussie Open qualies with no real expectations and does make some of her inconsistency ( which has been the a problem she has been steadily working on at the best of times ) into perspective.

May also be why the Fed Cup team announcement seemed late to some folk, with also Tara announced as travelling as a reserve.