Could be any number of reasons why everything has clicked into place this week but I definitely think the Olympics is worth a shout. She's been tweeting all week about how "pumped" she is watching it, but deep down she must be so sad not to be there participating, especially after what happened 4 years ago. I even remember a pre-injury tweet from her saying how cool the Rio Olympic village sounds because it has its own private beach so she must have been looking forward to playing there even three years ago. I think on some level she realised that she won't get moments like that again (not just at the Olympics but at majors outside of Wimbledon) if she carries on with the level she has been showing in recent months and realised she needs to up her game
No but based on pure speculation if she doesn't get a WC into US qualifying I think it will be the next USTA event on the calendar which is a 50k in Atlanta but it doesn't start until September. Then after that there is the 75k in Albuquerque and a 50k in Las Vegas which all seem like very Laura tournaments. :lol:
When Laura gets to wherever she was flying off to, maybe a day off to enjoy the win & sleep off the jet lag. Then 6 hours a day for the rest of the week standing under a basketball hoop throwing the ball up and watching where it lands (or some other repetitive training exercise until she gets it right). After a few days of that she might be OK to go back on a tennis court.
As much as her all round game picked up last week, the ball tossing & catching was excruciating to watch. She can maybe get away with it against a young fresh out of college kid but if Laura is catching the ball 2 - 4 times in succession throughout a service game in a higher profile tournament, the more experienced and higher ranking women will start to push back. Having the umpire and your opponent pressuring you could cause the serve to disintegrate. You can't say that Laura just needs more time in her comeback to rectify this - although the ball toss was always less than perfect, it has gone steadily worse over the last 6 - 8 weeks and considering Laura won 6-0 6-0, the later service games in Sunday's final were as bad as I have ever seen.
After what Laura has been through, potentially winning your first title is bound to add pressure and cause some nerves, even at 6-0 3-0 but there must be more to the problem than nerves as it was happening to a lesser extent when she was being beaten in every match.
There were some attempts at tossing the ball up that didn't go much above her head so that may just be lack of concentration.
Does the time violation rule not apply in ITFs? When she's catching her toss five times in a row I'm really surprised the umpire isn't saying something.
Could be, but the main complaints that have been aired about the 20 second rule is that the umpires aren't enforcing it on the top players with the same rigour that they penalise the lesser lights, especially in the ATP, although Nadal blew his top when they gave him a time violation (have you seen how long he spends adjusting his underwear before serving?).
There is so much money involved in tennis that a rule that is applied by individual judgement will always court controversy so eventually it should either be scrapped or enforcement becomes a fact, not a judgement.
In all the big money sports, only the dinosaurs that run football allow millions of pounds to be won and lost according to a referee's individual view of an event. American football, tennis, rugby, badminton, cricket all have video replays and some also have off pitch arbitrators, and the first to bring this in was American football. With tennis being dependent on corporate sponsorship and US dollars, I would think they will want to avoid controversy in apparent favouritism with players signed up to a handful of competing sponsors, so a definitive master clock is the only way to ensure fairness across the board.
BTW, the IPTL actally has a clock between points so quite a few players will get used to being on the clock, so to speak.
How about this little nugget
The IPTL also has other time-saving rules such as the loss of a point if a player catches an errant toss instead of attempting a serve.
Not much chance of Laura being asked to play in the IPTL then. She could lose serve without ever even hitting the ball. :laugh2:
TBH, as a fan I found the amount of times she was tossing the ball to be embarrassing (but that was the only thing that was embarrassing, everything else was perfection ). A viewer not so familiar with Laura's history might even suspect gamesmanship.
Then again, there are other players who do similar things such as Mestach who seems to spend ages bouncing the ball before starting her serve and from what I know she never receives time violations. But I seriously hope Laura sorts it out. She needs to use some visualisation techniques or something. Something like.. imagining to push the ball up a tube or your hand slowly growing and opening up like a flower.
Well, Laura tends to perform better on the bigger stages and although US Open qualies isn't exactly a big stage, it's a stepping stone to one so hopefully Laura will play inspired tennis.
I am sure she is very motivated and seemingly in good form. There's much more hope than there would be this time last year (even though she was in the maindraw).
Looking at Su Jeong Jang, she is ranked 173 but seems to exclusively play Asian ITF tournaments... Tatjana Maria is a tricky player, if Laura reaches the third round.. But the first round at least looks winnable.
I expect Laura to beat Jang, Jang is a baseliner and hits quite flat, Laura has power and likes these types of players. Jang is in a slump for couple of months now. Laura should come through.
Shinikova is slower on hardcourts,inconsistent some times have mental lapses in matches. The match is on Lauras racket , Shinikova will try to keep balls in play
Maria is the toughest opponent in the section, shes will slice and slice all day long. Laura need to be patient and keep attacking her backland and moves well. It's really is about patience and timing. Maybe Malcekova and Soylu will knock Maria out, I wouldn't be suprised.
Laura is the best player in that section if she plays well enough.
Comprehensive analysis but I can't believe you left out Lesley Kerkhove! :speakles: She was the gurl across the net in Laura's first match ever televised by the BBC: the 3rd round of Junior Wimbledon in 2008. Lesley also proved to be Laura's toughest opponent of the tournament, stretching her to 6-7 5-7 in an encounter characterised by bombshell serving from both players. She provided a way sterner test than Mel Oudin in the previous round who'd been elevated to top seed after Simona Halep, the French Open Junior Champion, shat herself after seeing Laura obliterate the field in the warm-up events at Roehampton and Eastbourne and pulled out of the draw. Clearly, Halep had decided "enough" was "enough".