Laura Robson celebrated her 16th birthday today by winning her women’s doubles first-round match at the Australian Open. Laura partnered Australia’s Sally Peers to beat Americans Jill Craybas and Abigail Spears 6-3 7-5. The match was played on Court Five in front of a very large and very noisy crowd, the locals obviously trying to win over Laura, who remember was born in Melbourne.

“They (the crowd) get into it. At Wimbledon they certainly don’t make chants up for every change of ends. It was pretty interesting. I was handed a certificate to sign to be an Australian as well but they said if I wanted my birthday present I had to sign it, so I didn’t.”

Happy Birthday Laura!

As you all will no doubt have heard Laura was handed a wildcard into the qualifying for the main women’s draw of the 2010 Australian Open. We now have some pictures from her second round match against Michaella Krajicek of the Netherlands.

Unfortunately Laura was defeated in straight sets 6-4, 7-6 (9/7), her opponent though was once one of the top 30 players in the world, so it was never an easy task. Remember that although she won’t be appearing in the womens’ event, she will still be competing for the Junior title, where she is in fact one of the favourites to win. Keep an eye on the site for updates on how she is doing with that. For now you can check out our 2010 Australian Open qualifying image gallery.

First of all, my apologies for not keeping this blog up to date with Laura’s (and Andy’s) progress through the Hopman Cup. Unfortunately I’ve just not had the time to keep up with it all myself, let alone the website.

As you probably know, Laura played amazingly well in the tournament and went on to reach the final. Partnering world no. 4 Andy Murray in the mixed doubles decider, they eventually lost the match 7-6 (8/6), 7-5 to Spain’s Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez and Tommy Robredo. You can read more about the results of the tournament and the matches they played to reach the final on the official Hopman Cup website.

Now I have been able to upload quite a lot of pictures of Laura Robson from the tournament, you can view all of these in our Hopman Cup image gallery.

Earlier today Laura played her quarter final match against American Lauren Davis, coming through for a fairly straightforward 6-2 6-3 victory. Rain disruptions earlier in the week meant the girls had to play both their quarter final and semi final matches today, meaning Laura was up against Yana Buchina later in the day.

Heartbreak for Laura Robson and her fans then came as she was defeated at the semi final stage by the Russian, who despite an amazing opening set by Laura, managed to bounce back and eventually win the match 1-6 6-3 7-5.

So disappointment for both Laura and her fans, but it wasn’t all bad news on the British front. Heather Watson managed to brush aside Thailand’s Noppawan Lertcheewakarn 6-2 6-1, before going on to beat Russia’s Daria Gavrilova 6-3 6-0. Heather will now face Buchina in the final, so we wish her the best of luck and hope she can give us Brits something to cheer about!

First off, apologies for the lack of recent updates on Laura Robson’s progress through the US Open. I’ve been incredibly busy with other projects and just haven’t had the time to keep the site updated. Now would probably be a good time for me to get some help in keeping the site updated, but more on the later, maybe…

Going back a couple of weeks now, you may have been aware that Laura was looking to qualify for the main draw of the US Open, unfortunately she fell at the final hurdle, losing to Eva Hrdinova of the Czech Republic.

This wasn’t the end for Laura’s US Open though, as she still had the girls’ tournament to compete in next week. She got off to a flying start, thrashing Tunisia’s Ons Jabeur 6-0 6-1, her opponent never really having a look in the game. Laura said it wasn’t a particularly interesting game, and afterwards said she was in fact more concerned at the level of calories in meals at US restaurants, looking at menus and saying “I can’t eat anything”.

Moving on to the second round, Laura faced seventh seed Lauren Embree. Laura lost a close opening set to the American, before coming back strong to overwhelm her opponent in the second. In the final set Laura came from 4-1 down in the final set to win 4-6 6-1 6-4.
There was one piece of bad news to come on this day though, Laura and Belarusian partner Anna Orlik lost 10-5 in a champions tie-break against Japanese pair Miyabi Inoue and Risa Ozaki, and are now out of the girls’ doubles.

Next up was the third round match against Tamaryn Hendler, the No.12 seed from Belgium. The match was played in front of a pretty large crowd, and some drama occurring at one point when Laura was given a time violation in the second set when waiting for the wind to die down. This didn’t affect her negatively though, as she want on to win 6-1 6-2, safely booking her quarter final place.

Bad weather has wreaked havoc with the schedule of play, and all yesterday’s matches were cancelled. So that’s all the updates for now. Keep an eye out for more as we await the result of Laura’s next match against American Lauren Davies.

Don’t forget to check out our Laura Robson pictures where you can now see photos of Laura in the US Open.

In a dramatic turn of events, Laura Robson lost her final qualifying match in Hechingen and has therefore failed to qualify for the main event.

She was beaten 6-3 6-2 by Katerina Avdiyenko of Ukraine. Let’s hope Laura can bounce back and have better success at her next tournament.

Laura is playing at a 25K clay-court event in Hechingen, Germany this week. She is currently playing in the qualifying draw to get into the main event, her first round match was a bye since her scheduled opponent dropped out for reasons unknown to us.

Today though she did get a match, and sailed through comfortably with a 6-1 6-2 win over Claire De Gubernatis of France.

We wish Laura the best of luck in her upcoming matches and hopefully she can make it through to the main event.

Forgot to make a post about the rankings last week so today is filling in that blank. Following her appearance at Wimbledon in both singles and doubles at in both Juniors and Ladies, Laura’s shot up the rankings table. Laura got up to a career high rank on 459 in the singles (now 464) with 74 points – this makes her now the British #11, and she’s just 12 points off Amanda Carreras, so she should be breaking into Britain’s top 10 pretty soon! In the doubles, Laura got to what was also a career high of 341 with 166 points.

Back to the Juniors, Laura is currently the world number 25 and British number 2, Heather Watson has actually overtaken her to become British number 1 having played more junior tournaments.

I’ll be updating the stats pages with updated rankings and win/loss figures since I haven’t done so for a while.

Just added over 30 images of Laura we seemed to miss over the last week. A few from the Juniors and a lot from her match against Daniela Hantuchova.

Keep checking back on Laura Robson Fans for news and updates on Laura’s next matches. The next major tournament for her is likely to be the US Open at the beginning of September, however there may well be a few smaller tournaments before that, so as soon as we know the schedule we’ll post updates here.

Laura’s match versus Quirine Lemoine of the Netherlands has started slightly earlier than I expected.

Bit of a slow start for Laura, currently down 3-0 and she’s just had the trainer on court, who gave some sort of massage treatment to her lower back. I’ll keep you updated with scores as the match progresses.

13:57 Laura just broke back, 3-1 down now and serving.
13:59 Laura’s not looking completely comfortable out there. Rubbing her lower back in between points…
14:01 Laura just about holds serve, now only 3-2 down. Laura now receiving more treatment.
14:15 Lemoine takes the first set 6-2. Laura not looking great out there, unsure if she’ll continue on in this match – for now it looks like she will though. I wonder if she’ll pull out of the doubles later on today though?

14:20 Fighting on, she’s won the first game of the second set.
14:28 Laura 2-1 up now.
14:36 Pretty gutsy effort from Laura, leading 3-2.
14:42 Both players holding their serves, Robson leading 4-3.
14:50 Same story again both girls holding serve. Can Laura now break Quirine to clinch the second set?
14:54 Quirine missed 6 serves in a row bringing Robson a break point, which she duly took. 1 set a piece now!

15:09 Both girls break each other at the start of the final set. 1-1.
15:23 Laura leading 3-2. Looking in a lot more pain again as she was in the first set. Hopefully she can hold out and win the match. Doubles match with Sloane later on today looking quite doubtful.
15:32 Lemoine just broke Robson to take back the lead from Laura, Lemoine winning 4-3 now. Laura got her first ace of the match just now but looks in a lot more pain.
15:38 Laura just saved 3 match points to stay in the game. Trailing 5-4, but can she turn the match around? Making Quirine serve for the match at least.
15:42 Laura somehow manages to break Quirine! 5-5.
15:46 Laura back in control for sure now. Winning 6-5, still in pain as well. Amazing.
15:49 6-6 and no tie breaks. This is gonna keep on going until one of them can get a 2 game lead.
15:52 Lemoine stepping up a gear, leads Laura 7-6.
15:55 And Quirine Lemoine has won the match. But what an amazing performance from Laura Robson, in pain the whole match but never gve up. Awesome effort.
Final score 6-2, 4-6, 8-6.

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