Laura Robson & The Thousand Randoms

[danbrusca]

Laura Robson's long and winding road back from injury hit a stretch of open asphalt today with a convincing 6-2 6-3 win over Klara Koukalova in Stuttgart.

Laura's been playing a mix of ITFs and WTA to try and building her ranking. Perhaps counter-intuituvely, her best performances have been in the WTA matches rather than the ITF ones.

This got me wondering why. I have this half-formed theory that the sheer inexperience of most of her ITF opponents makes it difficult to play. If you're playing an experienced pro then you can rely on them to approach points in some kind of logical fashion, you can learn to read them (except, maybe, Monica Niculescu).

But with younger players who haven't developed their own style you just never know what's coming next. Randomness of shot selection can be as frustrating to an opponent as excellent shot suggestion.

Thoughts?

 

[Federberg]

I think it's motivation, pure and simple. Happens a lot with mid-ranked players. One minute they're on centre court playing like a top 10 player, next minute they're losing to a nobody on the challengers. I would go as far as to say, a good guide for up and coming players that are going to really be something is how ruthless are they in the lower quality tournaments. Del Potro is a good example of this. The guy stamped on everyone in the lower tier events, and just kept going.

 

[britbox]

Interesting thoughts. I haven't seen much of the ITF tour but I was wondering the opposite with the ATP tour the other day when watching Borna Coric... I was thinking he'd need to add more to his game with regard to shot selection and changeups if he's going to go much further than he is already. Maybe the reverse is true with ITF... I'll need to watch more of it.

I think Laura will make her way back though. Maybe the tour is just getting deeper with regard to quality.