Slabba names as ITF Futures player of the Month for December :clap:

johnnylad · Tennis legend

Slabba names as ITF Futures player of the Month for December :clap:

imoen · Admin: Moderator+Tennis Legend

well deserved

XCW4EVA · County player

congrats to alex, hope he knows about it

helki · Futures qualifying

May he go from strength to strength in 2008.

steven · Tennis legend

Wow, excellent, I was wondering if we'd ever get a Brit winning this. December was the best month to turn on the style in order to do it of course!

steven · Tennis legend

With steveg publishing the 31 Dec rankings (even if the ATP haven't published them on their site), Slabba becomes the only Brit apart from Andy to be named (upwards) 'mover of the week' for ages.

I only hope he manages to avoid the burnout and rankings slides of the Brits who went deepest into December in 2005 and 2006, i.e. Matt Smith and Josh Goodall respectively. At least he seems to have taken a couple of weeks off since his win.

Ratty · County player

As any statistician will tell you, the most likely sequel to a sudden hot streak is a slump back to where you started from.

It's known as "Regression to the Mean", or perhaps the "Curse of the Manager of the Month Award."

Alternatively of course, maybe Alex has suddenly got miles better. Let's hope so!

Madeline · Admin:Moderator + Tennis Legend

Ratty, are you trying to pinch my title of "Chief Pessimist of the Board"? biggrin

Well done Alex, keep it up!

Sheddie · administrator

Wow, great stuff Slabba, will let him know about this...wonder if he gets any cash prize ?

johnnylad · Tennis legend

Slabba played more matches than any other male Brit last year.

He played 87 matches. Here are our top 5 in terms of matches played. I think it must include qualies for Allinson and Illingworth to be in there.

Slabinsky, Alexander GBR 47 - 40 87 0.540
Allinson, Edward GBR 45 - 33 78 0.577
Baker, Jamie GBR 45 - 32 77 0.584
Ward, James GBR 41 - 31 72 0.569
Illingworth, Matthew GBR 32 - 36 68 0.471

Happycynic · Pro player

Chief pessimist? Can I apply?

Sheddie · administrator

wow didn't realise Slabba played quite that many !!

and Ward aims to play at least 20 more than that this year !

wolf · Tennis legend

The full article is now up!

Count Zero · Tennis legend

as ratty said lets hope this doesnt have the same effect as footies manager of the month. it means you are desinted to lose your enxt match.

Sheddie · administrator

Spoke to Slabba a couple of days ago....here's the lowdown on his African safari:

"When I got to Sudan, I injured my back virtually as soon as I got off the plane, it was really bad, couldn't even bend down to do my shoelaces. There was no way I could play, could barely move and it didn't seem to be responding to physio treatment so I was about to book tickets back to Britain but my coach told me to stick it out and see what happened. Had to retire in my rd1 match against a wc and had physio and massage treatment every day but it got to week 2 out there and the back still wasn't looking good, I wasn't sure whether to play but luckily the wc I drew in rd1 got ill before the match and had to pull out at 2-0 down which gave me more time and 2 more days of physop before playing Brewer in rd2. By then it was a lot better, I played well, hitting hard and took it 2&2. Against Middlekoop, he was on form and had won something like 4 straight futures but I had a lot of chances in that match and should have won, had 3 set points at 5-4 1st set and led 3-1 in the 2nd but ended up losing 7-5, 6-3.

In Nigeria it was just ridiculously hot, so humid and energy sapping. By playing doubles aswell in the 1st week I spent too much energy as we won the title and it cost me in the singles. In my semi against the Moroccan El Amri, I won the 1st set in a tiebreak but had nothing left in the tank after that. The courts at the venue were all totally different, in the semis I played him on a really slow court and he's very fast so it suited him a lot but when we played again in the quarters the following week, we got put on a fast one and I just outhit him 1 &3. Played a really good match against Gard in the final, hitting hard and staying aggressive, didn't give him a chance. They regard the 2nd of back to back futures over there as the most important so it was a massive event in the city, the govenor was there to do the presentation, about 100 people turned up to watch the match and as soon as I came off the court there were microphones being thrust in my face. The police had to escort me from the venue as there were masses if local people grabbing me, begging for money and I had my prize cheque in my pocket !"