2009 Brie Watch.

[DBBN]

Why not collect her follies in one place.

Perth 25K -- Qualifying (First Round)
Jessica O'MEARA (AUS) defeated Brie WHITEHEAD (USA) 6-1 6-0 [/color]

A valiant effort from "young" Brie!

[DBBN]

O'Meara then lost in the next round to Marisa GIANOTTI (AUS) (16) by the same scoreline :red:

[DBBN]

Report from ozfan44: www.tennisforum.com/showpost.php?p=14449729&postcount=42

Jessica O'MEARA (AUS) d. Brie WHITEHEAD (USA) 6-1, 6-0
Didn't know who i was watching again here, Brie is a nice looking girl, lots of long rallies but is just not at this standard, having said that many of the games went to deuce before Jess would hit a few winners to seal it.....not a great match at all!!

Good job, Brie!

[leelee]

How did this kid watch like every match!!! Crazy!!

Mark O'Meara d. Barb Whitehead.

[DBBN]

Young legs, I remember those. Plus at Challengers all the courts are squashed up against each other. It's not like you have lines to get into Moore-Oudin like you do at the US Open.

[janie]

Next for Brie: Sorrento, Aus 25K qualies.

Then a week off to recover from her exhausting Perth qualy match and relax with sultans and princes, then the next week she's about 2 millionth alt. in the very popular Dubai 75k.

In other news, next year all bagel girls will have a much harder time sneaking into WTA Q draws. IIRC what I have read, WTA qualy players will now be offered Hospitality, so more real players will be signing up. Additionally, new ranking limits of 350 and 750 have been put in place for the those 2 top tiers of tournaments that I can't remember the names of, so no more direct entry for eager bagel girls into those when the whole Q field deserts.

[DBBN]

Yup, they'll have to start winning matches in ITF main draws to get ranking points...no more freebies into Tier IVAs.

Of course, there are always WILD CARDS!

[Brinyi]

Behead with ire
I bathe weird, eh?
Habit die where?
Bare white hide
Hit her Web idea
Hi, bite hard. Eew.

[janie]

Nov 23, 2008 12:37:02 GMT -5 DBBN said:

O'Meara then lost in the next round to Marisa GIANOTTI (AUS) (16) by the same scoreline

Just to follow up, Gianotti then lost her next match. And the girl who beat her then lost HER next match.

At least the girl who beat the girl who beat the girl who beat Brie won a ranking point despite her loss, because that was r1 of the MD.

Will Emelyn Starr be the one to break the Curse of Brie, in r2? Stay tuned!

[janie]

Sorrento 25K Qr1:

Kat BAILEY (AUS) d. Brie WHITEHEAD (USA) 60 46 62

Qr2:

Jocelyn RAE (GBR) (4) d. Kat BAILEY (AUS) 60 60

[DBBN]

She won a set!

[janie]

Zabala overheard at the Boca deli: "I'll take 2 bagels with Brie, please!"

Boca Raton 25K -- Qualifying (First Round)
Paula Zabala (COL) defeated Brie WHITEHEAD (USA) 6-0 6-0

Happy New Year, Brie! 2009 is off to a perfect start!

[DBBN]

Paula Zabala must be the GOAT.

[janie]

Jan 11, 2009 21:20:02 GMT -5 DBBN said:

Paula Zabala must be the GOAT.

Qr2:
(1)Natalia Orlova (RUS) d. Paula Zabala () 60 61

Yes, everything is as it should be in Brieworld.

[DBBN]

Well, Orlova is the top seed in qualifying after all. Soon we will see her as the top seed at Wimbledon!

Brie is the Real #3.

[janie]

Brie made it into qualies in Rancho Mirage, Cal. 25K this week. She "starts" against
(14)Laura Siegemund (GER).

[DBBN]

She will win! a game

GO BRIE! WIN! a game

[janie]

"HowardH" of New Zealand posted the following report a couple days ago at wtaworld. Brie's playing in qualies in a NZ 10K next week, so she must have entered this "money tournament", I guess similar to the ones she played in Aus. a few months ago, to get some (or one, since she's Brie) warm-up matches in. There'll be no commentary from me!


Today (a couple of hours ago) I watched Brie play a money tournament (no itf points, just prize money) in Albany (North Shore of Auckland). It is a small tournament, 10 entries in the women's draw (But they never fill the draw anyway, even in the mens', they always give the seeds byes to the quarters at least and if more people enter they make them play qualifying instead of filling the draw, which I think is stupid ). Anyway, due to the low number of entries, Brie had a bye into the second round. The top two seeds have byes all the way to the semis . There is also a mens' tournament at the same time, so there were a few matches to see. I was surprised to see her name there, I didn't realise she was in the draw until this morning, but I guess I wasn't paying attention.

Brie is very, very cute in person. Basically adorable. She walked around the venue before her match with two older women, I think one was her mum and I'm not sure who the other one was. When she played her match she was wearing a black tank top and white skirt with the word LOVE written in large white letters down her left side. I suppose you wouldn't be allowed to wear that in a wta tournament, but in a little tournament like this it seems to be fine and looked rather stylish.

And? She lost, 6-1 6-2.

In Brie's defence, she was coughing quite a bit, so she obviously wasn't at 100%. And she looks like she's about 16. I didn't realise until I came home and looked her up that she is actually 19 now.

What should I say about the match? I seemed to be the only person watching the match, apart from my dad, who watched a bit of her and then went to watch some other matches, and one or two other people who walked past. There were no seats so I stood behind the court by the cars. (Although I suppose her mum, who seemed to be around somewhere, was probably watching from a distance. I saw her mum before the match but didn't spot her during it.)

Brie is not a bad hitter of the ball, really. Her first serve is quite nice, quite fast (maybe 90mph at her fastest) and reasonably accurate, and she quite often serves and volleys quite successfully. But her second serve can be unreliable, since she doesn't get a lot of spin. Under pressure she tends to double fault. Her volleys are probably the best part of her game. She volleys technically better than most pro women, but she isn't as good when stretching for the volley. Half volleys are a bit of a problem, since she tries to hit them with nearly a full swing. Her smash isn't bad at all. Her groundstrokes are a little too flat and a little cramped, but otherwise quite nice. I think if she could hit her groundies with a bit more spin it would be better, hopefully more consistent.

She is technically solid on pretty much every shot. She also moves well, as you would expect when looking at her (she is in good shape). But the main problem is that she is, as my dad put it, too much "hit and miss". It's as if she is in the phase that a junior goes through just before they become a real player. She hits well, but doesn't convert it into winning points. Because she hits the ball well I thought in the warmup that she could win. She looked better than her opponent. Her opponent, Tiffany Wheelock, is a local junior whom I have seen play 2 or 3 times. She's ranked 91 in NZ in the interclub rankings (topdog). Her serve is horrible, a kind of ugly jerky pattycake, she pushes her second serve, and she doublefaults a lot too. Her groundstrokes are better but still a bit strange. But Tiffany runs fast, she is mentally tough, and she refuses to give up. She also swears every time she misses, if there aren't any umpires or linespeople. Seriously, and she looks like she is such a nice girl (until she opens her mouth. I mean, how many times do you need to swear when you're winning 1 and 2? Every third point apparently ).

When Brie went down 0-40 and lost her serve in the first game (which turned into 0-3 very quickly) I started to guess why her record is so poor. She gets into quite good positions in points but then fails to put the ball away or misses a reasonably easy ball. Her serve was producing weak returns from Tiffany most of the time. When Brie served and volleyed her first volley was mostly an easy one. She hit good solid volleys but didn't quite finish the point. When the volley was below the net, she often made the mistake of trying to swing volley to lift the ball, which invariably missed. Just silly errors. Should have used a standard volley for those tough ones. After about 4 or 5 attempted winners, volleys and smashes, Brie tended to eventually miss, although there were also some good attacking combinations from Brie. (Tiffany is a really dogged defender, probably Brie would have had better chances against someone with a different style.) She often seemed well on top of the point, and would hit about 6 or 7 very nice attacking shots, but then miss for apparently no reason. She was attacking with her groundstrokes but couldn't hit the winner and she tended to miss at the crucial moment. But there were some great volleys and some great winning groundstrokes from Brie. Brie outplayed her opponent in quite a number of points, but normally followed that up with some cheap errors. Most of her errors were by quite small margins, but a fair number of them missed by many meters when something obviously went horribly wrong in her timing.

In the second set the first 4 games were all breaks (plenty of swearing from Tiffany there. Brie by comparison is very well mannered on court, and only dropped her racquet a few times in disbelief when she missed shots from easy positions. Particularly when she missed returns off Tiffany's 40 mph second serve which landed about 2 metres past the net.) But after that Tiffany started to serve a bit better and Brie was still unable to hold. I think Brie held once in the match, during the first set.

Although the score was onesided many games were close. If Brie could only hold serve a bit better. The match started at about 3:30 and finished at about 4:30pm.

Brie is currently well below the level of local pros like Shona, Kay, Pavlina or Dianne (who would dispatch Tiffany about 1 and 1). Tiffany will probably lose tomorrow to Briar Preston (3rd seed, and one of the top local juniors) about 2 and 3 or maybe easier. But Brie could be so much better if she just figured a few things out. It was a bit strange, like watching a pretty good junior who just doesn't know how to win matches.

Overall, after all I've heard about Brie, she was better than I thought she would be. I think she must be improving. And she seems so sweet, when you're watching her you feel really sorry for her. At least, unlike some of my other favourite players, she really tries to win. Her game is quite smooth and nice to watch, even if she doesn't win that much. Hopefully she'll eventually figure it out. It would be difficult, but I have to say, not entirely impossible for her to get her game together. I do hope that she might improve enough eventually to have a respectable itf career. Maybe in a few years.

[GoDom]

It would be better for Brie and her mom if she wasn't improving. And not just because Bagel girls aren't supposed to get better.
If 40+ women like Dewonder and Nancy chase their dreams, nothing wrong with that. But Brie is a young girl and she has to realise eventually that she's not born to play tennis.

[janie]

Look, if she's improving yet she STILL can't get close to winning a set from some complete nobody in some below-10K qualy-level event in New Zealand, she and her mother really should see the writing on the wall. The girl is almost 20 and has been at this for years now, and nothing has changed at all in her match performances. I suppose they're fondly remembering her fluke reign in the top 700, and imagining she could reach those heady heights again, but so many anti-bagel-girl rules have come out since then that it's extremely unlikely to happen.

But that's no different from Alex Stevenson and her mom imagining she can reach the top 10, where she "belongs", some day. Some people were just born to live in imaginary worlds. They should all be forced to read Madame Bovary. Or better yet, just skip to the end and take the arsenic and be done with it. :angel:

[leelee]

Hogwash. If I had a rich mommy that would fly me around the world to get bageled, I'd hug and love her every day and never let her go. If I win the lottery and have a baby girl, we're going that route.

I have my doubts if Brie is as good as this Kiwi is saying, though. I've seen 10K girls. If one has a decent serve or forehand and is in good physical condition, you'll win a couple games by accident.

[DBBN]

Yeah, he makes it sound like she's good. We all know she's not.

Yet she won some games! Brie Brie Brie!!

[Edna Krabappel]

I remember some other reports on WTAW that said she's "not bad", which I think probably has much to do with people's expectation. I guess people thought she'd be basically immobile, that she would miss the ball all the time, serve nothing but DFs etc. so when they see that she actually can get her racquet on the ball they think "Hey, she can at least play, she's not that bad!", which she of course must be.

[janie]

Plus, Mr. H has probably never seen even a decent lower-level challenger player in action. His claim that Brie "volleys technically better than most pro women" makes me think he hasn't been around much. I mean, we all know the pro women aren't much for volleying, but surely getting the ball to actually go where you want it to is part of what makes a player a "good" technical volleyer, not just looking like a pic in some tennis book. I think Mr. H was just enchanted watching little Barbie Brie prancing around in her little outfit and went off into some sort of Briedaze, allowing him to imagine that Brie "might improve enough eventually to have a respectable itf career. Maybe in a few years." No.

And Leena, I doubt you'd want to watch your kid being humiliated over and over again for years and years, just so you could be part of the pro tennis scene. At least I like to think you'd notice her misery and back off. Better for you to win that lottery and get out there yourself, as long as your lottery win comes when you're under 50, which was Navie's retirement age. Think of all the fans you'd have!

[leelee]

You're assuming Brie feels humiliated and miserable just because she loses at tennis. You cannot play tennis, or any individual sport, if you cannot accept that you'll lose the vast majority of the time. It only serves to make her one annual victory that much sweeter!

I also doubt that Brie is miserable and lacks commitment because as pyrrhic as it seems, her scores suggest Brie IS improving.

[GoDom]

She looks pretty miserable in that clip where she's serving a DF.

[janie]

Well, I admit I'm only going by Corswandt's report that she looked miserable that one day in Estoril.

The sadder thing is that, for me, this goofy topic has been the most interesting one in the world of women's tennis in quite a while. All the different points of view about Brie's "career" are interesting to see. Yeah, Dokic's surprise run at the AO was fun, but that's been about it since JH retired. I'm starting to realize that aside from the first round of qualies at challengers, I'm not really much of a fan of women's tennis any more. I can't imagine paying money to attend a women's tournament, even if it were a half-mile away. What's happened to this sport? I even miss grumpy old JenCap.

[leelee]

The Sistahz happened, and made it cool to not care. If the players would rather design clothes and watch movies all day, then I'll go watch paint dry.

Brie served a DF! She should have been angry there!

[janie]

North Shore City, New Zealand 10K, Q draw: Brie's section:


Lizaan du Plessis RSA (8) v. Brie Whitehead USA
Tegan Edwards RSA v. Nungnadda Wannasuk THA (11)

[DBBN]

du Plessis? I don't expect a game.