Just got back from Sheffield; really enjoyed the tournament, the courts and surroundings were great.. top class event.

First match I saw was Bloomfield/Brewer.  As the scoreline shows [3&0] Bloomfield totally dominated this one and was hitting winners from all over the court, Brewer looked out of his depth out there. 

Then there was the Flanagan/Kasiri match.  Flanagan played well thoughout the first set, employing the sliced backhand to try and neutralize Kasiri's baseline domination; Miles' game was however error strewn.  Another point was Flanagan's drop shots, amazing.. I genuinely lost count of the amount of times he had Kasiri scrambling and v.few were actually returned.  Didn't catch much of the second set, but watched the end of the third.  Flagagan actually had two match points at 6-5 as he went 15-40 up on Kasiri's serve but blew them.  He then went on to take the tiebreak, I wouldn't say deservedly because the match was quite poor and not particularily enjoyable compared to other courts.

Nikola Mektic looked quite impressive in his R1 match against Allinson, whose game didn't appear to quite have the fluidity of other's.. and it showed as he had to work extremely hard a few feet behind the baseline for most of the match.  Mektic used an extreme western forehand and although he didn't appear to generate much power he moved Allinson from side to side and was very effective at varying depth and angle.

In contast I was impressed with Neil Bamford's strokes against the Frenchman Adrian Mannarino.  There were some good rallies were the ball was given a good beating but overall Mannarino was that bit better at finishing off his points and I would say that he thought a little more about his point construction.  Overall though I enjoyed watching  Bamford's style of big groundstrokes from either side.

Next up there was Kyle Brassington's game against Olivier Charroin.  Kyle started off well and his serving could be described by 'Boom Boom, Boom shake the room'.  Similarily with the forehand which was powerful yet also consistant, yet he also struggled to finish off rallies and it really showed in the scoreline.  On top of this Charroin showed a larger variety of ways to win points, from accurate groundstrokes to drop volleys. [However he was quite convincingly beaten by his compatriot Mannarino in R2]

And then there was possibly my favourite match of the day; Poland's Wojciech Starakiewicz against Ken Skupski.  The Pole had gone through three rounds of qualifying and word quickly got round about his on-court antics, more spectators/players/coaches watched this match than any other. Starakiewicz 's strokes looked technically quite poor ]based on my poor knowledge of stroke production] yet they were effective and he was able to move Skupski around and produce some nice winners.  His serve was of a good quality but you nearly fell asleep wating for it as he demanded all 4 balls at the beginning of every one of his service points, strolled up towards to the service line and then to the back of court before he would finally serve. During points he regularily demanded a let when a stray ball came close to the court, notably when Ken was on top.  If he won an important/long point/passing shot he would shout 'Thats the shot!', 'Amazing shot'.. and many others that I have forgotten.  On top of this there was his on court manerisms which all of the players watching seemed to have a distaste for and Ken, walking back to serve, called him a 'd******d'.  During the first set Ken played pretty bad, spraying forehands a foot or so long on a regular basis and it looked like he was going to go down in two easy sets, but he managed to grind his way back into the match and take the second set.  The play was fairly equal by the third set and it really was difficult to predict which way it was going to go, although Ken did seem to have the slight upper hand.  Ken had two match points during the final tiebreak but Starakiewicz handled the pressure amazingly considering that was to be his first ATP ranking point and [questionably] deservedly won. He also treated everyone to a Federer style collapse on the court after taking his MP... Funny/annoying guy!

Another good match was that between Alexander Flock and Joshua Milton. Flock is a powerful German player and was hitting out from early on, although Milton seemed perfectly able to deal with the power and won some of the longer rallies.  Serve was traded a few times in the first set and Milton was quite impressive at points, particularily when he broke.  He appeared to be solid on both sides and on service but not spectacular on any.  He was decisively broken at 4-4 and never really recovered from this.  Decent player but whether he will break through.. Im not so sure but he is technically very good so anything is possible.

Will write up a couple more later, as well as post some poor quality photographs [apologies about this, I only had an average digi camera to use..]
If you have any questions about any of the players/matches just ask because I have probably missed out a load of stuff..

Thanks Trivial...look forward to more...!!!

Trivial wrote:

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Somebody asked for pictures of Bloomfield [can't remember who though..!], which I will upload later.. but for now here's a short/poor quality video of him playing today:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCGwY3xD1qY

-- Edited by Trivial at 17:31, 2008-01-23

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Unfortunately its rotated 90Deg...looks good though when you tilt your head

 

Q/F
BURQUIER (FRA) / REIX (FRA) defeated BREWER (GBR) / FLANAGAN (GBR) (3) 6-1 6-4
EATON (GBR) / SKUPSKI (GBR) (4) defeated CAMPBELL (GBR) / ILLINGWORTH (GBR) 6-3 6-2

S/F
EATON (GBR) / SKUPSKI (GBR) (4) Vs FLOCK (GER) / KRETSCHMER (GER)

Thanks for that report, James, it made very interesting reading!

Fitzy - best of luck in Nigeria (or Tipton!)

Bladetiger wrote:

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Bloomers is having 2 weeks off after this and then playing two ATP Qualies

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Interesting that most of us think of him as a Challenger level player, yet Challengers are what he seems to be missing out! Perhaps he thinks he'll have to qualify for Challengers and if he'd have to do that, he might as well get a few Futures points then take a pop at ATP qualies instead.