Helen Crook Retires from Singles

from www.gbtennisgirls.com

The driving force behind GB Tennis Girls, Helen Crook, has decided to call it a day from singles competition. After a year plagued by injury and ill health, she announced after Cardiff that she will be concentrating her on-court efforts to improving her doubles ranking, which is currently 197, making her British no. 1.

Helen set the precedent for girls turning professional after a university education, and despite always playing catch-up with her peers she reached a career high ranking of around 250. She will now be in a position to devote more time to GB Tennis Girls initiatives to help the next generation of British talent.

Helen has won 18 doubles titles, hopefully she can get this up to 20 before long and crack the top 150.

Can't believe she never got to play singles in the main draw of Wimbledon or any of the other British WTA events. She's been in the GB top 8 for a good 5/6 years, and has often been among our top 6 players but was always overlooked.

Plus, seh's been through so much on and off the court, with illness, injury, heart problems (had she not goen to teh hospital she could of had a stroke!).

Keep fighting Hel, the Hub (which is a training set-up organised by Helen and has girls such as Karen Paterson and Chantal Coombs part of it, both have recently shot up the ranks) will mean that even when you retire fully, you will not be forgotten.