Hello everyone. Wobs is alive and well, sorry if that disappoints anyone
My ransom value is virtually nil, I'm unkidnappable for financial purposes, and you probably wouldn't want to harvest my internal organs if you knew about my food and drink habits.
When Emma withdrew from Auckland at the end of December I was really disappointed, and began to lose my faith somewhat. I didn't even look at EE for a month or so, then became a lurker to see what was being discussed. Then, of course, we had the dreadful Dubai incident and some of the fallout fell on EE. When The Guardian described EE as "a dense, deep rabbit hole of extreme fandom, verging on the obsessive," I chuckled a bit but they weren't far off the mark, speaking for myself only. Having said that, no one off EE has done any actual stalking and mostly we were identifying where Emma
had been, not where she was going to go. We have to speculate about scheduling because the sport is notoriously bad at telling fans who is playing where. And The Guardian is, like the rest of the British press, clearly obsessed with Emma - around half of Tumaini Carayol's articles this year have been about Emma.
The main reason for not posting was simply to see how long it took before I was mentioned on the Missed Posters thread! 88 days was the answer, give or take a day or two. Guess I wasn't that missed after all
There are just one or two recent postings where I would like to make a hopefully helpful contribution. Firstly, on ranking:
Part of the answer is that Emma still has only 16 tournaments in her ranking, whereas the great majority of the Top 60 are at the full complement of 18 tournaments. Rouen will replace Stuttgart, and Madrid is also a replacement. Emma will reach 18 by playing Rome and Roland Garros. After that, it's a mix of replacement (or defending) events, and then seeing if Emma can knock-out the pair of one-pointers in her total. Also, as people on EE have noticed, there are more tournaments around, so more points, and some fairly random players have picked up big points from one-off runs.
Secondly, the bunny:
All I can say here is that this bunny is totally different to Miffy, who comforted Emma after her surgeries in 2023. Funny pic though.
Finally, on the schedule and Emma's rather vague comments in the Miami QF presser, I think that was Emma's go-to response so as not to give anything away. Emma is almost at the point where the schedule writes itself because of the tournaments she is entered into automatically. In the very short term, next week (w/c 31 Mar) is traditionally a sponsor window for work tied in with RG and the USO. Then it's about the transition onto clay, with the two indoor events providing a good way of easing in. Emma is directly into Madrid and Rome but I'm not sure if she will play the latter as it hasn't been a happy hunting ground before, so Emma might tolerate a zero-pointer. The grass season is going to be active, and then Emma's schedule for North America and Asia becomes very strategic, made up of tournaments she will be obliged to play, and those where Emma might really want to go because she thinks she would have a good chance or due to a juicy appearance fee being on the table.
The terrific run at Miami this week has restored some of my damaged faith. People will say that a couple of opponents were 'compromised' but the fact is they were being totally mullered by Emma. This week has also been a good reminder for Emma of the standards set by the likes of J-Peg and Sabs to seemingly always be in the last 8 of big tournaments on a regular basis. EE has been back to 20,000+ views a day this week. Have the good times returned?
