Wimbledon star Harriet Dart defends British tennis gamers after Dan Evans’ rant
Dart is having fun with a powerful begin to the grass-court season, reaching back-to-back quarter-finals on the WTA Tour for the primary time. The world No 135 was a part of a historic lineup of 4 British girls within the final eight in Nottingham, shedding to eventual champion and compatriot Katie Boulter.
Boulter confronted Burrage within the first all-British WTA remaining since 1977 and reached a career-high of No 77 as she re-entered the highest 100. It got here simply weeks after zero British girls made it into the principle draw of the French Open, with none of them sitting inside the highest 100 till Boulter’s triumph.
Dart has now recommended the efforts proven by the present crop of British girls on the latest grass-court occasions. She stated: “I think it’s great that we have a good crop of girls coming through and especially it shows in Nottingham I think it was four of us first time in the quarters for I can’t remember how long, a long time.”
Addressing latest considerations over the state of British girls’s tennis, she added: “And it just shows that okay, we didn’t have anyone in the top 100 – we’ve got one back into top 100, I’m hoping to get back into there, Jodie [Burrage] is at a career-high and Heather has been playing great and going to be getting her ranking back up too. So I think it’s great to see. I think more than anything it shows that all of us have the level and if one person can do it, all of us can do it as well.”
It comes after Evans launched a scathing assessment of British tennis and questioned why the gamers on the BJK Cup staff didn’t compete the week after shedding their qualifier tie. “[As a nation], we’re picking and choosing what tournaments we play and we’re ranked 200 in the world,” he stated.
“I’m not going to bag the girls here but no one played after [the BJK Cup in Coventry]. There’s some cultural thing about resting and all that. It’s not new. Maybe they’ve got too much money or something. I think players need to compete more week in week out.
“The players need to get out on the road and just get after it. It’s not like there’s great science behind it. I mean, it can be hard on the tour but you need to be at it.” But the ladies have been placing within the onerous yards on the grass, the place Dart admitted they may profit from alternatives like getting wildcards into tour-level occasions.
The British No 4 additionally cleared up claims that Brits did higher on grass as a result of they acquired to play on it extra as she defined their success on the floor. She defined: “It’s funny because a lot of the foreigners think that we grew up on grass which I think is not correct.
“We grew up on indoor hard because let’s be frank, the weather is not good enough in this country for us to play enough on grass. But I think what we do have to our benefit is that as soon as clay season is done we are the first to hit on the grass, having a lot of courts in this country.
“I think a lot of people, before they even step foot in the UK, probably haven’t hit on a grass court. So we do get those extra days and I guess over the years just being exposed from juniors. Even if it is a short period of time, we’ve had that opportunity to play grass-court tournaments whether that’s junior Roehampton, junior Wimbledon and I think year on year you get better and better.
“Whereas I think for some of the foreign players, I think some of the senior players probably haven’t even hit on a grass court until they’ve actually come to Wimbledon.”
Dart additionally thought that the house crowd was key, including: “So I guess we have that as an advantage and maybe that’s why we do better. But also I think a lot of us thrive with the home support, the home crowd, you kind of feed off it. We do get a lot of Brits coming to other tournaments during the year but there’s nothing like playing on home soil.”