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Ana Konjuh - Volume 3

169K views 3K replies 74 participants last post by  networthy 
#1 ·
Born 27.12.1997
Ok guys I followed this girls developement for quite a few months now.
Last month she won the European Junior Championships, Pilzen for girls under 14.

Other success she had this year:
Winner of G16 Junior Croatia Open, Cakovec
Winner of G14 Mladost Grill Open, Zagreb
Winner of G16 Kvarner Open, Rijeka
Also reaching a G16 final in AvignonFR and a couple of SFs.

This year she has a win-loss record of 48-7 currently. With those 4 titles.
She seems to be highly talented, there´s a lot of potential, hope she´s not going to fade away and go her way.

http://www.nacional.hr/clanak/113738/ana-konjuh-vodeca-u-europi
http://www.nacional.hr/clanak/113113/ana-konjuh-europska-prvakinja

People might say it´s too early for a thread but after twinning the European Championchips I though she would deserve a own thread.
 
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#3 ·
next week fed cup! I am so curious how it will be. She had two weeks more to prepare. She will have 6 matches minimum, 3 singles and 3 doubles. So after Fed cup she will have in total 2 months of training, 8 matches played minimum, no points to defend until grass season and no pressure of Tournament limitation due to her age. Perfect situation to make some good results.
 
#6 ·
thanks god she won doubes. Singles she lost due to double faults, thats what happend, always when she lost service she made 2 double faults. I would love to see what is she doing at training, she is serving bad since a while, if I remeber her service in Wimbledon 2014 how good it was I just want to cry. I dont understand why they dont get rid of Schneider, basic things like serve and footwork she is not improving at all or becoming even worst.
Croatia was soooo lucky that Kanepi is ill and could not play, Estonia would have passed the group. Now against Turkey and Israel she will face far worst opponents than Anett and doubles they will win anyway. So it looks really good for Croatia to play Ucraine in final. Ucraine will be difficult, Tsurenko is much better than Anett, they also have a good double team and they will have one match less so they will be fresh. and Ana I am afraid with 6 matches in 3 days will be too tired to face Tsurenko.
 
#9 ·
I thought Ana would take the tour by storm because she is that talented. To be fair, she's had some injury problems with her elbow and now her back. But it's going to take some time.
 
#12 · (Edited)
Next for her is Dubai Q, the event kicks-off Feb. 15th.

As for Fed Cup, if she was making that many DF's and she didn't feel any discomfort/pain left over after her latest injury then I'm worried. Cause it wasn't just during one match that she had these serve issues, it was in at least 2 singles matches, and from what I saw yesterday in those few points towards the end vs. Israel, doubles weren't spared of these problems either.

As for her aspirations regarding the ranking, I've played with the numbers a bit, comparing some things. Her team says they wanna aim for top 30 this year. And since I think one of her main problems are the losses in matches that she should be winning (those that she loses to players ranked outside of top 100), I've compared her in this regard to a player currently ranked at #30 - Kiki Mladenovic.

Last year Ana had 6 losses to girls ranked outside of top 100, which doesn't seem like a lot until you take into consideration she played only 40 singles matches in a year. Kiki played 69 matches and suffered only 3 such losses. That's a pretty drastic difference, when you take out the percentages.

So I think that only when she reaches a level of play that'll allow us to be calm about her playing some girl ranked 220 in the world or something like that, will she be ready to take serious leaps up the rankings. No one is saying she has to win all of those matches, cause even the elite players sometimes lose to girls ranked way down, but with Ana that still happens much too frequently for her to be considered a contender for a more serious spot in the rankings.
 
#14 ·
Somehow I like it more when Ana starts her tournies in Q, as she's a slow starter and kicking it off from qualies tends to be more forgiving. Let's hope I'm right.


BMS is definately beatable, if Ana is healthy and motivated. But no, I don't think it'll be a walk in the park.

Good luck :)
 
#16 ·
Looking at these players in qual. I have to say she's optimistic to say the least. Its a mistake to play this if you ask me, she should build her form and confidence in less challenging fields.
Her schedule reminds me of Martic when she was starting to struggle but was still ranked high enough, she was also very unwilling to step down a level and establish her form there which led to well,..we know what...

Acapulco and Monterrey seem a lot better for Ana right now, or some of these events in Asia,...just look who's playing the semis tonight in Tailand- Doi, Hsieh, Putintseva...

Here she'll have to beat 3 very good players just to enter the tournament, in Mexico or in Asia 3 wins like that would get her very close to the title

Ah well, good luck, draw seems decent enough at least
 
#18 ·
Because they said last year they want her to play and train and make training matches with the best players. That's how they hope she will improve faster. I think they are wrong. But anyway I am not a big fan of her team. When she was 15 in her first fed cup match she beat Radwanska being then number 27 in world. One year later in her wta debut she beats Vinci number 11 then. And now two years later these two wins are still her best wins. Who would have said that two years ago that she will not even repeat these wins. Horrible development and waste of talent. And the responsible ones are still in charge. I will never understand it why they still let her talent in the hands of that amateur Schneider.
I just hope when she makes changes that it will not be too late.
 
#20 ·
2-6 3-6 against Mattek

Considering these courts are pretty quick and she served 71%, only 1 ace, looks like she barely won any rallies (if there were any to begin with :lol:). Mattek got into 3 return games and broke every time.
Mattek held routinely throughout despite serving 34% in the match :facepalm:
 
#22 ·
I too feel like she has regressed since 2013-14 :tape: This is so disappointing... She's losing to everyone these days :( :sad:

I think it's obvious the ambitious approach (entering the strongest tournament that you can) has proved ineffective for her, I don't get why she isn't trying to change something
 
#23 ·
Interestingly, Bencic also played the strongest tournaments in the first half of last year and was not winning much. I just think Ana has to get match fit/tough now without AER and she'll turn it around, too.
 
#24 ·
It's gonna be tough to get match fit by playing a match here and a match there and for that to change her game should improve significantly. Like we've said several times, she's played just 10 matches in the first 10 weeks of last season, and the main cause of that was scheduling. No wonder she couldn't pick up any momentum.

But I've said way too much on this subject already and no matter how much we repeat it, her team seems reluctant to change anything about their plan, which doesn't look like it's working at all.
 
#25 ·
If it makes the loss any easier to take, BMS also schooled Ostapenko.

It is clear that the strategy of entering Premiers is not working. For goodness' sake she can't even beat Buyukakcay and Kontaveit (when Kontaveit had a migraine too, and after leading with a set and a break :tape:). BMS is streaky so we don't know what happened here, but it is absurd that she is playing all these strong events when by no stretch of the imagination is she actually going to go deep in them. She doesn't have AER anymore so that can't be used as an excuse, she just needs to play week in, week out at 125Ks and Internationals. When she is winning 3 matches in a row, then she can upgrade. The last weak tournament she played was Nottingham, and she won it... If that's not an indication I have no clue what is.

I also think she needs to learn to grind out matches. She has become more of a BBB over the years as she is not used to players being able to deal with her intense hitting (in juniors no one could, she used to humiliate girls who were older than her). She needs to improve her fitness but also her brain if she wants to break through.

Anyway, hopefully she finally starts to get things going more. If this slump continues until Nottingham her ranking will die. It would be nothing but tragic to see her turn into Donna.
 
#26 ·
The only smaller tournament I potentially see her playing before RG is that 125 in the States (in San Antonio I think), between IW and Miami, assuming she flops early in IW. All else is doubtful, cause they surely won't skip any of the mandatories, and since she'll have to play qualies for those, that rules out the weeks coming into mandatories as well. When you add to that the need to take some time to settle on the new surface and acclimate in Europe after Miami, doesn't leave much to think about. So I'm expecting to see her in Doha, IW, Miami, Stuttgart, Madrid, Rome and Paris.
 
#28 ·
Yeah right now that seems like a horrible schedule, she did that last year and it went bad. A couple of wins but didnt make it out of qualies in any of those big tournaments.

The one tournament where she did well was in Prague, weaker field, played herself into form, and then Nottingham.

There's that great Einstein quote, saying that only a fool is doing the same things over and over again but expecting different results...
 
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