Eaton gets a great 1st Round draw against local wild card Wibowo (whose first ever match at this level was last week which he lost). However it would be Top Seed Lindahl in Round 2
Ward plays Indian - Vardhan who did beat Matt Smith earlier this year but would expect James to be too strong here.
Well at least Eaton should get a point this week...shame he's in Lindahl's section, he'd have a chance against most of the other seeds here. Lindahl should be playing challengers tbh, he's top 300, beat Jamie Baker 2&1 in April and took Donald Young apart in the spring too....been dominating futures all year
Ward should make quarters, then he'd be likely to play 2nd seed and huge serving Aussie Ebelwidthe who's ranked 336...did really well on the astroturf in June, winning a 15K in Ireland and making Dublin ch semis beating Baker in 3 sets. Hasn't done much since tho
Good wins for both of them, so at least they will come out of this week with a point. Ward should win his next match, but Lindahl will probably have too much for Eaton
Ward and Eaton lost their doubles QF 6-1 6-2 to the 4th seeds, Chang and Peng of Chinese Taipei
The results were as expected, but this looks like it could be a good tour of Asia for Ward, and hopefully he can reach the QF's for a few weeks in a row, which could get him towards the top 500, and maybe go on to a final for one of the weeks
Ebelthite is a decent player, and cruised through his last match, but hopefully James can win this, as he would have an unseeded player in the semis, so it would be a great chance to reach a final
Unfortunately Ebelthite won 6-3, 7-5 He is ranked 300 places higher though, another 2 pts for James this week so can't be bad ! The way forward for him game-wise imo is to work on being more aggressive, taking the ball on more from the back and looking to dictate. He's got the huge serve, and the shots to do so.....against Eaton at Hampstead last month, he creamed a no of winners particularly off the backhand but then he'd take his foot off the gas, let Eaton control the rallies and stay several feet behind the baseline hitting loopy topspins from side to side.