No surpises with wild cards, although they opted for 4 instead of 8 & had less in the draw. Delgado to destroy the biggest under achiever in British Tennis Ian "The Waster" Flanagan. Forgive me but the guy is a knob!!
__________________
Its Not Who You Know But What You Know.........Or Is It???
Due to majority of my department being on holiday today, and also being in a match myself later on today, I have been unable to make the 2nd and 3rd round qualifiers - shame as weather is much better and might be playing outdoors.
I have emailed a contact at the event to see if they can supply me with regular updates. If I get them, I will post them as soon as
Ken Skupski's younger brother Neal is playing in qualies too. He's 17 and is playing his second senior event after a Futures last year where he reached 2nd round of qualifying.
He won his first match 6-3 6-4 against Ryan Stotland. Anyone know any more about him? Is he a prospect?
__________________
Of all tyrannies a tyranny exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive.... those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience
Copying and pasting the draw from pg 1 (big thanks to gazzpash for getting it and doing the great match reports )
A Jones (1) vs D Cox Qualifier vs M Ryderstedt J Sirianni vs Qualifier C Niland vs R Bloomfield (8) S Stadler (3) vs Qualifier J Huta Galung vs G Dyce R Junaid vs J Vacek I Zelenay vs G Lugassey (6) P Wessels (5) vs J Goodall A Coelho vs H Levy P Petzschner vs Qualifier T Oger vs A Dupuis (4) R Bopanna (7) vs L Childs D Meffert vs J Ward A Feeney vs L Uebel D Evans vs A Qureshi (2)
Draw doesn't look too good, I reckon we'll be lucky to get 2 players through to rd2.
How unlucky is Cox, getting Jones again in rd1 for the 2nd week running....still I guess it's great experience for him, getting to test himself against a top 200 player
Not the best of rd1 draws for Bloomers given that he's seeded but he should win. Niland had a great run in the Dublin challenger, riding the home support to make the semis. Bloomers beat him 6-3, 7-6 in the final of a 15K last autumn. Richard has little to defend till end of September now, hopefully he can rack up the pts on the grass in the next couple of weeks before heading to North America.
I believe that Huta-Galung is the highest ranked player Dyce will have faced. He's ranked 341, if he got more first serves in he'd surely be top 200...first serve is massive as is the forehand. Backhand can be erratic though. He has a great record against Brits, beat Boggo and Childs last autumn and beat Mackin in April, Alan's final match before retirement. It is Huta-Galung's first match on grass this year and he's been competing a lot on clay recently so hopefully he will struggle with the transition
Again Josh gets a shocker of a draw and with so many points to defend Wessels has been as high as 72 but had been in a bit of a slump and down in the 400s before a spectacular return to form in Hertogenbosch, the grass court ATP just before Wimbledon. He qualified and then made the final, beating Robredo, Dupuis etc before losing to Ljubicic in a final set tiebreak.
Arka, do you know anything about Bopanna's game ? I think Childs might have a chance of an upset there, Bopanna is ranked 234. They've played 3 times before and Childs has won all 3 matches. The last two matches were on grass, Lee won 7-6, 3-1 ret in Surbiton 2003 and 5-7, 6-4, 7-5 in Manchester 2004.
Meffert has been playing mainly on clay recently, this will be his first match on grass of the year. It's been a poor year considering the form he showed last autumn, not done much and he's slipped down at 343. Maybe James can get a set here ?
As for Evo-Qureshi....same as with Cox's match...grrrrrrrrrrrrrr @ the draw but good experience for Evo I guess.