Week 20 - Futures F2(M) - Syros, Greece

Sheddie · administrator

Week 20 - Futures F2(M) - Syros, Greece

Mervatron · Masters Series Champion

Well done Miles and Lee.

Good to see Miles get back to back finals

johnnylad · Tennis legend

Lee winning does not bode well for the future of British mens tennis. He's not exactly proved himself any higher than around the 400 mark.

I hoped Ward would win. He and Kasiri could hopefully become good challenger players

john · Top national player

That's very unfair and off the mark on Childs. In 2003, he beat Davydenko, at that time the world number 35 at Wimbledon. A few months later, he made the final of the Tumkur Challenger in India.

The quarters of the Belgrade challenger followed a few months after that followed by a run of 2 quarters and a semi in Futures and a second round in a challenger giving him a career high of 251.

He also reached the semis of the Manchester challenger in 2002 beating Nicolas Thomann who was ranked 166 at the time, the quarters of the Nottingham challenger in 2006 beating Santiago Gonzalez who was ranked 179, and has regularly reached the very latter stages of Futures around the world through his career.

OK, so he's hardly a rising star of the British game and even if he has a renaissance will probably go no further than the 250 mark but James Ward has some way to go before he even proves himself to be of that standard, so let's give some respect to what Lee has done in his career and give him our support.

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

imoen wrote:

welcome Stircrazy, thanks for correcting the mistake. Arka you make us sound like some kind of secret society!!

Thanks for the welcome, guys (& gals, of whom, for the record, I am one!). smile

imoen, funny you say that, but that's exactly how it appears to the casual reader! wink

That said, given that it's now less than six weeks until the annual heroics in SW19 get under way (sadly, not at Roland Garros, since the Boy Wonder's now a confirmed non-starter cry

) & having registered on the day I stumbled across this board, but not had the courage to post (not, I hasten to add, because I'm unused to Internet message boards, but rather because you lot are actually quite an intimidating bunch to an outsider! ashamed

), I just had to emerge from my little hiding place, didn't I? Looking forward to some interesting exchanges of views...

P.S. Anyone had any news from Greece yet? I've seen nowt so far on either the ATP or the (abominable, to use Jimmy Carter's word) ITF site. blankstare

Salmon · Tennis legend

Why are we intimidating?

imoen · Admin: Moderator+Tennis Legend

No news as far as I can tell yet.

And Stircrazy, I'm very glad to hear you're a 'gal' there are far too few of us to control this lot! I hope you'll aid Madeline, Sally and I in this thankless task?!

You should post an intro in the Intros section, that way you can answer all the usual questions (of when you started following tennis, who're your favourites, do you play yourself...and anything else we manage to come up with) in one place.

I'd had a quick look at the Greek version of the Lta website and i can't see anything at all about this tournament which just goes to show how much of a replica it is of the lta (there's plenty about last week and next week but it's as if no tournament was happening this week). Of course, I could be missing something completely given that my greek is no more than place names and numbers!

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

Arka wrote:

Why are we intimidating?

Sorry, I meant no disrespect! ashamed

Maybe it's just me, but you seem such a tight-knit - & knowledgeable - group & I'm naturally shy, so even with the cloak of the (relative) anonymity of cyberspace, I just wasn't sure whether I'd be able to contribute anything constructive to the debate & - to be honest - how I, as an interloper (or so I felt!), was going to be greeted: I had to swallow very hard before I finally hit the "submit" button...

johnnylad · Tennis legend

john wrote:

That's very unfair and off the mark on Childs. In 2003, he beat Davydenko, at that time the world number 35 at Wimbledon. A few months later, he made the final of the Tumkur Challenger in India.

The quarters of the Belgrade challenger followed a few months after that followed by a run of 2 quarters and a semi in Futures and a second round in a challenger giving him a career high of 251.

He also reached the semis of the Manchester challenger in 2002 beating Nicolas Thomann who was ranked 166 at the time, the quarters of the Nottingham challenger in 2006 beating Santiago Gonzalez who was ranked 179, and has regularly reached the very latter stages of Futures around the world through his career.

OK, so he's hardly a rising star of the British game and even if he has a renaissance will probably go no further than the 250 mark but James Ward has some way to go before he even proves himself to be of that standard, so let's give some respect to what Lee has done in his career and give him our support.

not being funny, but a Brit with a big serve beating a donkey who, at the time, hated grass at Wimbledon isn't exactly eart shattering. What happened in R2 out of interest?

Respect to what he's done. Just want the up and coming player to beat him. I think it will be better for British tennis in the long run. And if Childs wins I will congratulate him but I will be disappointed as it will prove to me for definite that Kasiri has less potential than I currently think.

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

imoen wrote:

No news as far as I can tell yet.

And Stircrazy, I'm very glad to hear you're a 'gal' there are far too few of us to control this lot! I hope you'll aid Madeline, Sally and I in this thankless task?!

You should post an intro in the Intros section, that way you can answer all the usual questions (of when you started following tennis, who're your favourites, do you play yourself...and anything else we manage to come up with) in one place.

I'd had a quick look at the Greek version of the Lta website and i can't see anything at all about this tournament which just goes to show how much of a replica it is of the lta (there's plenty about last week and next week but it's as if no tournament was happening this week). Of course, I could be missing something completely given that my greek is no more than place names and numbers!

Cheers, imoen, I'll do my best. biggrin

I'll also sort out a post in Intros along the lines you suggest (now why didn't I think of that?

). Good to see I'm not the only one who thinks the LTA site is worse than useless for anyone looking for up-to-the-minute news of tournament results where Brits are involved. It was a combination of that & the fact that the ATP and ITF sites are more often than not updated so late for tournaments without a live scoreboard (& us lesser mortals with only a digi-box...

) that drove me to look for a better-informed source of such information & that's how I came across this MB! wink

-- Edited by Stircrazy at 18:28, 2007-05-19

Salmon · Tennis legend

Stircrazy wrote:

Arka wrote:

Why are we intimidating?

Sorry, I meant no disrespect! Maybe it's just me, but you seem such a tight-knit - & knowledgeable - group & I'm naturally shy, so even with the cloak of the (relative) anonymity of cyberspace, I just wasn't sure whether I'd be able to contribute anything constructive to the debate & - to be honest - how I, as an interloper (or so I felt!), was going to be greeted: I had to swallow very hard before I finally hit the "submit" button...

Haha.

It's all right - I usually lurk around for six or seven months before posting on message boards, too.

Still no news about the final. yawn

Mervatron · Masters Series Champion

johnnylad wrote:

not being funny, but a Brit with a big serve beating a donkey who, at the time, hated grass at Wimbledon isn't exactly eart shattering. What happened in R2 out of interest?

Respect to what he's done. Just want the up and coming player to beat him. I think it will be better for British tennis in the long run. And if Childs wins I will congratulate him but I will be disappointed as it will prove to me for definite that Kasiri has less potential than I currently think.

he lost to Rafael Nadal who beat Mario Ancic in round 1!

Childs has always baffled me, hes had the game to go further in mens tennis but hasn't really achieved it.

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

Can some kind soul explain to me just how the ATP updating system works? The site is now showing the results for the Futures event in Colombia, four hours behind the UK, viz. Myles B lost to the Argentine qualifier, Niemiz, 4-6 6-3 1-6 (

). He then promptly lost to the top seed (Quintero) in straight sets, 1 & 4, but there's not so much as a hint of what's happened on Syros, yet Greece is two hours ahead of us...! confused

Sheddie · administrator

I think that rain may have washed out play today, Miles said earlier that it had been bucketing down all day so far...he also said that he injured his shoulder in the semi

imoen · Admin: Moderator+Tennis Legend

Stircrazy wrote:

Can some kind soul explain to me just how the ATP updating system works? The site is now showing the results for the Futures event in Colombia, four hours behind the UK, viz. Myles B lost to the Argentine qualifier, Niemiz, 4-6 6-3 1-6 ( ). He then promptly lost to the top seed (Quintero) in straight sets, 1 & 4, but there's not so much as a hint of what's happened on Syros, yet Greece is two hours ahead of us...!

The updating system works as quickly as the tournament tells the ATP the results at the end of the day's play (hence it's never up before 9pm for UK futures/challengers).

As for rain washing out play, that would explain why the OOP changed from play starting at 11am to at 12noon. I guess we'll just have to wait some more . On the bright side, we gets results much much faster than a few years ago when the web wasn't such a big thing (admittedly I wasn't following tennis then but even in the two years I have it's gotten better, so lets dream of live streaming at all futures idea )

Hope Miles is OK, the last thing he needs is another injury just as he gets on a roll with the results