wimbledont wrote:

---

Wow, some time since our Brit second ranked woman attracted any comments...

After watching her several times over the course of the 2024 grass season, and after a disappointing final loss to Wang Xinyu in Wimbledon R3, in which I thought Harriet was in some respects the better player, a couple of problems with Harriet spring to mind...

Her serve is really not all that - and particularly the second serve is both unreliable and a bit feeble at times. But more importantly, she's an utter nutter. (There may be some more politically correct ways to phrase this, but...)

In recent weeks, she had emotional crises in 3 of her matches, twice against Boulter, and against Wang, which arguably cost her two of those matches.

Notably, in the Wimbledon doubles with Maia, they both seems very happy and relaxed - positively giggly at times - Harriet seemed a completely different character.

But in singles, she seems to get really unecessarily and counter-productively wound up.

Given that Harriet is now around the age that JoKo suddenly transformed from the Brit number 3 also-ran (behind Laura and Heather) ranked around 150ish, into Brit number 1, eventually CH4... and herself credited some of this transformation to working with a sports psychologist, I'd suggest that Harriet should follow this route also.

I'm wary of over-pursuing this, as its something of a taboo area; and any professional would warn against online diagnoses of any aspects of mental health; but I do think that Harriet could improve her results, possibly also improve her serve stats, enjoy her tennis more, and possibly even attract more traffic to this cheering thread, if she found help that allowed her to remain a lot calmer on court. This is fixable - and much more easily than, say, radically remodelling a service action.

In other, less contentious news, congrats on a new provisional career high of 81.

---

 I think a few of our players need this. Jodie also benefitted from help in that area enabling her to move from around 225 to top 100. Harriet seems completely out of control at times so it could only help her.