Aptos (California) Challenger, 16th - 22nd July 2007

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

Aptos (California) Challenger, 16th - 22nd July 2007

Salmon · Tennis legend

Brad's son is playing qualies!

Your link to the entry list isn't working. Is it this one - http://dps.usta.com/usta_master/usta/doc/content/doc_13_18025.pdf?6/28/2007%2012:48:54%20PM ?

Jamie won't be the top seed. On the ATP Player Zone site, the main draw players are listed according to alphabetical hierarchy and the alternates are listed according their ranking. And Jamie's last name begins with 'B'.

-- Edited by Arka at 15:00, 2007-07-14

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

Arka wrote:

Your link to the entry list isn't working. Is it this one - http://dps.usta.com/usta_master/usta/doc/content/doc_13_18025.pdf?6/28/2007%2012:48:54%20PM ?

Jamie won't be the top seed. On the ATP Player Zone site, the main draw players are listed according to alphabetical hierarchy and the alternates are listed according their ranking. And Jamie's last name begins with 'B'.

-- Edited by Arka at 15:00, 2007-07-14

It is - & you're right! Hadn't actually looked at the other players' rankings - & failed completely to spot that they were in alphabetical order ashamed

- so on that basis, he won't even be seeded!

P.S. My excuse is that I'm still a relative novice at this game!

P.P.S. Have just checked & the link doesn't work for me, either!

Dunno what went wrong...

-- Edited by Stircrazy at 15:11, 2007-07-14

Salmon · Tennis legend

Jamie Baker (GBR) vs (3)Noam Okun (ISR)

Sheddie · administrator

Ouch ! Nasty draw for Jamie

Okun is currently ranked 156 but has been briefly in the top 100 in the past, reaching a career high of 95 reached in 2002. He's also in superb form having won last week's Winnetka challenger and the medium paced hard courts suit his solid baseline game. He has a decent serve but his main weapon is the forehand. He enjoyed a great spell in North America last summer, making the semis of the two Canadian challengers, then qualifying for the US Open and making a challenger final in Texas. He started 2007 well, reaching the semis in New Caledonia but his form tailed off and he only won a handful of matches until June but now seems on the up again.

Jamie has 5 pts to defend from last year as he won a round before losing to Rajeev Ram. Last month, he seemed to be returning to the form he showed at the start of the year, hopefully he can do some damage in these challengers in the next few weeks...I guess he's playing a series of them leading up to US Open qualies. It's his fav surface, so hopefully he'll get some better draws than this week. He doesn't have much to defend till end of September.

Baker-Okun is on Tuesday

Sheddie · administrator

Stircrazy wrote:

The home site for the tournament is spectacularly uninformative for anything other than the qualies at this early stage

Yeah unfortunately the tourney website is pretty poor, doesn't give much apart from the draws and OOP.

However, luckily the local newspaper over there (Santa Cruz Sentinel), provides superb daily reports from the challenger, giving info on some of the matches.

This is the link: http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/news/sport/index.html

Salmon · Tennis legend

Welcome back, David. Had a nice holiday?

Sheddie · administrator

Thanks Arka, the holiday was pretty good..did loads of walking. All the courts in Annecy are either acrylic or indoor, no clay which was amazing ! They get a fair bit of rain due to all the mountains over there so maybe that has something to do with it....we had some incredible electric storms, not to good if you find yourself stuck up a mountain though which can the weather can go from boiling heat to thunder and lightning within 30min !!!! Paragliding is really massive over there, can be quite dodgy though with the upcurrents around the mountains !!

How are your exams going ? Do these ones count ? When do they finish ?

Salmon · Tennis legend

Sounds like you had a good time! It's a shame that you missed the tennis tournament, though - it starts on the 23rd.

My exams do count. They finish on the 20th (day before Harry Potter

) and then I'll be exam-free till October.

-- Edited by Arka at 17:57, 2007-07-16

Sheddie · administrator

Yeah it was a shame I missed that

Really hoping to get to some futures or British tours in the next few months....there's some British tours in London which I should be able to get to and hopefully there'll be another 25K or futures in Sutton

Good to hear your exams are nearly over, how are they going ? How much holiday do you get after them ?

Baker qualified for the doubles main draw with Fritz Wolmarans

RobC · All-time great

Jamie makes it a full house for Brits in Challengers and ATPs on Monday: Okun beat him 16 61 63

- wonder what happened in that first set?

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

RobC wrote:

Jamie makes it a full house for Brits in Challengers and ATPs on Monday: Okun beat him 16 61 63

There's still the doubles to go: he & Fritz Wolmarans (RSA) bagged the only qualifying spot & play Kyu Tae Im & Takahiro Terachi (unseeded) in the first round proper...

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

Stircrazy wrote:

RobC wrote:

Jamie makes it a full house for Brits in Challengers and ATPs on Monday: Okun beat him 16 61 63
There's still the doubles to go: he & Fritz Wolmarans (RSA) bagged the only qualifying spot & play Kyu Tae Im & Takahiro Terachi (unseeded) in the first round proper...

Anyone any idea how they got on? confused

The ATP site has still not been updated & the Aptos site is so useless it's showing no results of any description, not even the fact that the boys had qualified for the main draw!

RobC · All-time great

From Steveg:

Kyu-Tae Im/Takahiro Terachi (KOR/JPN) d. (q)Jamie Baker/Fritz Wolmarans (GBR/RSA) 6-1 2-6 (10-7)