(3)Lee Childs/Ross Hutchins (GBR) d. (1)Thomas Oger/Lovro Zovko (FRA/CRO) 1-6 6-4 6-4

Great stuff from Bloomers Smeets is a tough opponent, he qualified for ATP Sydney, won a round at the Aussie Open and won a 15K down under so beating him should give Bloomers a lot of confidence.

Oger will be tough as although Oger is ranked 150 places lower than Bloomfield, this is his 3rd 15K final of 2007, having made finals in Sheffield and Sunderland at the start of the year. He's proved to be a bit of a bete noire for British players, defeating James Auckland and Colin Fleming last summer and Tom Rushby, Ross Hutchins and Josh Milton so far this year. However, although Oger has had plenty of success in futures, he's been found wanting when trying to step up to challenger level, losing in qualifying for the Wrexham, Besancon and Sarajevo challengers in 2007.

Great to see Ross Hutchins getting another title, I'm really hopeful that he can break the doubles top 100 this year. Now needs to start playing more challengers. I think Josh Goodall is still his regular partner and Josh is aiming to reached the top in singles and doubles, they've reached several challenger finals together plus won a match at Wimbledon so it's a partnership which has a lot of potential. Think they will be teaming up in Bath this week as Josh makes his return after that minor groin strain.

As for Jim May, he's got a conundrum as I think he's mainly concentrating on the doubles while his regular partner Neil Bamford is still undecided as to whether he should drop singles and just go for the doubles - think he still wants to give singles a go. This is a problem as if they go for challengers (which they need to start doing this year to break top 200 and higher), Bamford won't make the singles qualies cut.

I hope that Lee Childs starts playing more doubles and finds a regular partner, he's stalled around the 400 mark in singles and it doesn't look like he's going to make the top 200 now so doubles could be his best chance of reaching the top 100. Having been ranked no 1 junior in the world at doubles and won a junior doubles slam he evidently has the ability to go a lot higher than his current doubles ranking of 520.

Woohoo! Just as expected!


It's been a great week. Shame that he isn't doing Tallahassee.