That's more particularly so from the becoming more established current hierarchy of the top Brits, with the current top 10 in the rankings being 10 of the top 11 scorers so far this year.
The next group of players in the rankings have had a much slower start, with the notable exception of Tom Farquharson ( and good to see Richard Gabb have a good week ). This has largely meant the 20 in the top 500 ambition being a bit further away for now.
Pretty promising from Luke, George and Cameron.
Re Tom Farquharson, I see that in the latest top 25 table, effecting the projected ranking scores for next Monday, Alex Ward has been "donated" Tom's 6 points from last week. Now the absent Alex's need may be greater at the moment, but still..
Re Tom Farquharson, I see that in the latest top 25 table, effecting the projected ranking scores for next Monday, Alex Ward has been "donated" Tom's 6 points from last week. Now the absent Alex's need may be greater at the moment, but still..
Oops! I don't think I've done that before but you can tell that I transfer the points to the "lw" column manually in this case - usually it's a copy and paste from the "nw" column, but during 2-week ATP events, I have to make sure I don't overwrite any Futures points brought forward from the previous week. Corrected now, anyway.
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GB on a shirt, Davis Cup still gleaming, 79 years of hurt, never stopped us dreaming ... 29/11/2015 that dream came true!
6 new singles career highs today and they all involve quite big moves, so worth a mention:
Liam Broady up 54 to 395 - into the top 400 for the first time
Luke Bambridge up 48 to 562 - into the top 600 for the first time
Cameron Norrie up 38 to 759
Jathan Malik up 56 to 928 - his first new career high this year
Harry Meehan up 39 to 999 - into the top 1000 for the first time
Tom Allen up 191 to 1497 - into the top 1500 for the first time
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GB on a shirt, Davis Cup still gleaming, 79 years of hurt, never stopped us dreaming ... 29/11/2015 that dream came true!
Very good progress from Liam of late, with the Bournemouth title and I was generally pretty impressed with his play and attitude in his SF loss in Edinburgh ( which will move him a bit further up the rankings ). I must admit to having had more doubts about him than I have now.
Up until WImbledon, the following higher-ranked guys have absolutely zero points to defend and so a perfect window of opportunity to make some good progress in the rankings:
James
Dan C
Ed
Certain others have a mountain of points coming off, and life looks precarious
Sadly, two former GB no. 2s have both left the ATP rankings today as their Wimbledon QR2 points from last year come off - Alex Bogdanovic and Jamie Baker. The latter officially retired, the former presumably quietly retired.
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GB on a shirt, Davis Cup still gleaming, 79 years of hurt, never stopped us dreaming ... 29/11/2015 that dream came true!
Also worth adding (though Indiana has made a similar point on other threads recently) - 8 GB men have picked up more than 100 ATP points in the first 30 weeks of 2014 c.f. just 3 in 2013, 4 in 2012, 3 in 2011, 4 in 2010 and 5 in 2009, before which the figures are not comparable because of the change to the ranking point system.
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GB on a shirt, Davis Cup still gleaming, 79 years of hurt, never stopped us dreaming ... 29/11/2015 that dream came true!
I was having a look at our top 500 players, 14 of them, all of whom are currently in the top 400, Oli just for now.
The age distribtion is interesting. From oldest to youngest :
27 : 2 - James, Andy
26 : 1 - Ed
25 : 2 - Dave, Josh M
24 : 6 - Brydan, Alex, Dan E, Dan C, Marcus, Dan S
21 : 1 - Oli
20 : 1 - Liam
19 : 1 - Kyle
It strikes me as a case of - do you want the good news or the bad news ? Ah, lets get the bad out of the way first...
There are clearly only 2 active players there under 24. Of course, Liam and Kyle are as we speak in running GB no 3 and 4 and progressing really wel, while Oli is currently on the outside looking in. That is maybe a bit of a worry for a few years down the line if we came back here and we don't exactly seem to have a great group of juniors following up.
On the other hand most of us here ( more than the LTA it seems at times ) recognise that on average players these days are fully developing to top line tennis later and making real rankings progress later. It has been great to see the development of so many of the 89 / 90 group, who looked good in juniors ( and certainly had numbers ), but initially often went through their struggles in seniors.
So in what has generally overall been such a good year amongst our foremost players and promises more to come, maybe a bit of concern further down with the younger ages, and that maybe linked to the fact that we are down to 14 top 500ers, likely 13 by the year end.
I see a good 2015 coming and in the background really hope to see more young players coming through. Farris looks one, I would really like to see Luke push on again and Cameron excited before injury and college.
According to live rankings, chance for James to sneak into the top 100 this week, if results in Helsinki go in his favour (Sela beat Berankis and then lose in SFs).
According to live rankings, chance for James to sneak into the top 100 this week, if results in Helsinki go in his favour (Sela beat Berankis and then lose in SFs).
The question is, would he really want to sneak into the top 100 like this? If he's never going to get there any other way, then obviously the answer is yes, but if he's confident that he's going to make it anyway, it must be more satisfying to get there at the end of a week when you have done well and when more people are likely to notice. Although in Tara terms, it wouldn't be top 100 anyway
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GB on a shirt, Davis Cup still gleaming, 79 years of hurt, never stopped us dreaming ... 29/11/2015 that dream came true!