(5)Jan Minar (CZE) d. (q)Konstantinos Kalaitzis (GBR) 6-4 7-5

Evans and Willis won their doubles R1 though

Irwin and Pritchard took out the Aussie 2nd seeds too!

Some other British results but none of particular interest....

It'll be very tough for Dan as Sidorenko is 19 but has a ranking that roams around the 300 mark. He won the Australian Open Juniors title last year and has reached the finals of three Futures on clay since then.


Minar is in Britain after back to back titles in Turkey.



Good to see Evans and Willis win their doubles match. Even though they don't play together much these days, they are both exceptionally good at doubles. They may have a chance against the seeds in the quarters.

This is the set of match reports I got from my reporter in Bournemouth yesterday:

16 year old Dan Cox continued his impressive run in this week's Bournemouth 15K reaching round 2 with an impressive 6-3, 6-3 victory over Canada's Pierre-Ludovic Duclos. Duclos is currently ranked 566, almost 600 places higher than Dan.

Dan started slowly, Duclos held serve to love and then broke immediately to go 2-0 up. However, Dan picked up his level and took the next 5 games, breaking the Duclos serve 3 times to propel himself into a 5-2 lead. Serving for the set, Dan tightened up and got broken but at 5-3 he managed to set up three set points at 0-40 on the Duclos. The Canadian saved all 3 to bring things back to deuce but after a further three deuces Dan secured another set point which he took to wrap up the first set 6-3.

Both players held serve to share the opening 2 games of the 2nd. Dan then slipped 0-40 down on serve but managed to fight back and hold to take a 2-1 lead. This proved crucial as Dan broke in the very next game and then cemented his lead with another hold to go 4-1 up. At 6-3, 5-2 Duclos was serving to stay in the match, Dan had match point at 30-40 but couldnt take it and Duclos held on to make him serve it out. Dan proved up to the task and sealed one of the best wins of hs career 6-3, 6-3.

He now faces the no.1 seed Alexandre Sidorenko in the second round. 18 year old Sidorenko is ranked just outside the top 300 and reached a high of no 3 in the junior rankings but he was given a big scare by British qualifier Matt Illingworth (who's ranked down in the 1300s). Sidorenko started very strongly, racing into a 3-0 lead but Matt hit back winning 4 out of the next 5 games (breaking Sidorenko twice) to lead 5-4 and serve for the first set. However, he couldn't hold his nerve and Sidorenko edged the next 3 games to win the set 7-5.
Illingworth remained undaunted and he started the 2nd in a similar vein, breaking to lead 3-1. However, again he wasn't able to hold on and the Frenchman levelled at 3-3 before breaking the Brit again. He served for the match at 7-5, 5-3 but Illingworth wasn't beaten yet and he pushed Sidorenko to 4 deuces before the no 1 seed finally closed it out 7-5, 6-3.

Going into this tournament it looked as though James Ward would be the British player mostly likely to win a few matches here, he competes on clay all year round and has made a couple of futures semis in Spain so far in 2007. However, James received one of the worst possible draws against 3rd seed Laurent Recouderc who won a couple of futures on clay last month. It was all one-way traffic in the first set as the Frenchman won 5 successive games on the way to wrapping it up 6-2. When Recouderc stormed to a 3-0 2nd set lead with a double break it appeared that things would be all over very quickly. However, James battled his way back into the match and levelled the set at 4-4. Unfortunately though, Recouderc proved too strong in the end and he broke in the 11th game before coming through 6-2, 7-5 to book his place in the 2nd round.

Wow! He had to fight for the win then.


Thanks for all the scores, Drew!

Bad news...

Sidorenko Def Cox 6-2 6-1 !!!