Week 40 - ATP World Tour 500 - Tokyo, Japan (Hard)

steven · Tennis legend

Week 40 - ATP World Tour 500 - Tokyo, Japan (Hard)

LouieG · County player

I'm surprised James is the top seed in qualifying, last I looked he was 11th on the list! What happened?

-- Edited by LouieG on Friday 26th of September 2014 05:25:16 PM

Jeff Stelling · Club Coach

Withdrawals from the main draw so people like Muller, Tomic and a few others got moved to MD. Kyrgios withdrew. Then wild cards went to Soeda and Ito who were both ahead of James. Finally he's ranked ahead of Herbert on rankings used for qualifying seeding.

-- Edited by Jeff Stelling on Friday 26th of September 2014 05:34:53 PM

LouieG · County player

Can't complain! Has a good chance of qualifying here, what do we think of Ram possibly in the next round?

TMH · Futures qualifying

20 points for qualifying here too (assuming nothing's changed and it's still a 32-man draw). Ram won't be easy though, should they both negotiate their opening matches.

RJA · Hall of fame

LouieG wrote:
what do we think of Ram possibly in the next round?

Winnable but far from a formality. There probably isn't much to choose between the two of them.

paulisi · Tennis legend

James won in straight sets 6-3 7-6

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

And in the doubles:

R1: Jamie Murray & John Peers (AUS) CR 63 (31+32) vs Steve Johnson & Jack Sock (USA/USA) CR 95 (80+15)
R1: (4) Eric Butorac & Raven Klaasen (USA/RSA) CR 42 (21+21) vs Dom Inglot & Florin Mergea (ROU) CR 68 (40+28)

Not easy draws for either pair. hmm The boys are in different quarters of the top half, with Jamie & John having the misfortune to be in the same quarter as the Bryans.

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

Doubles qualies:

QR1: Jamie Delgado & Gilles Müller (LUX) CR 381 (218+163) vs (q2) Frank Moser & Alexander Satschko (GER/GER) CR 111 (125+86)

They've just dropped the first set by 4-6. cry Were they to qualify, they would face the third seeds, Granollers & (Marc) López, in the first round of the main draw...

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

QR1: (q1) James Ward WR 117 defeated Toshihide Matsui (JPN) WR 439 by 6-3 7-6(3)

QR2: (q1) James Ward WR 117 vs (q5) Rajeev Ram (USA) WR 150 (CH = 78 in November 2009)

In the only encounter between the two, James beat Ram by 5 & 2 in the first round of the Manta (Ecuador) Challenger in 2010.

Spectator · All-time great

That's quite an easy 10 points. Hope that Mr Ward can go (at least) one step further.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Spectator wrote:
That's quite an easy 10 points. Hope that Mr Ward can go (at least) one step further.

Hear, hear.

Although these points now don't really add much, if anything, to James' overall total (2, I think, in this case), they do give him a nice cushion for when the higher points come off, which makes his ranking more stable and must take some of the pressure off.

RJA · Hall of fame

Spectator wrote:
That's quite an easy 10 points. Hope that Mr Ward can go (at least) one step further.

This is an example of how ridiculous the the points system is. The draw here is pretty pathetic and the 8 seeded players all won their opening match against players outside the top 400 and get 10 points for doing so. Meanwhile in some challengers players win 2 qualifying matches, often against at least one top 250 player, and get 0 points for it.

RJA · Hall of fame

If James does beat Ram in FQR his possible opponents in R1 would be Tsonga, Chardy, Johnson or Golubev. Not a very nice selection but then this is an ATP 500.

Spectator · All-time great

RJA wrote:
Spectator wrote:
That's quite an easy 10 points. Hope that Mr Ward can go (at least) one step further.
This is an example of how ridiculous the the points system is. The draw here is pretty pathetic and the 8 seeded players all won their opening match against players outside the top 400 and get 10 points for doing so. Meanwhile in some challengers players win 2 qualifying matches, often against at least one top 250 player, and get 0 points for it.

Agreed. Delighted about Mr Ward's points, but the system is utterly ludicrous. Have never understood why there weren't points involved in the latter rounds of Challenger qualifying. Apart from everything else, the lack thereof makes the switch from Futures to Challengers extremely problematic.