aw, Miles

Grundon wrote:

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Sadly Miles lost in straight sets 2-6 3-6

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Oh dear, what depressing news!   So Brit hopes now rest with Slabba in the singles & Bamfs & Goody in the doubles.   Slabba's QF would appear to be fairly evenly matched:  Faurel may be the sixth seed, but he's ranked only 14 places higher, while Bamfs & Goody are the top seeds in the doubles (combined ranking 589) & their opponents, de Schepper & Penaud,  are unranked...

Yay Slabba!

gazzpash wrote:

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Slabba won 7/6(2) 2/6 7/6(6) which is great result

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It is indeed!    Only trouble is, he now faces the Frog second seed, Thomas Oger (299), in the QF!    Still, he won't know, if he doesn't try...

And the good news is, Bamfs & Goody beat de Schepper & Penaud 2 & 1 to reach the final of the doubles.  Their opponents will be either the French WCs, Guey & Quinqueneau, who put out the Moroccan second seeds, El Amrani & Ziadi, in the QFs, or the French third seeds, Charroin & Reix...

Some numbers for those interested - the excellent win for Alex takes him onto 80 ranking points and a new, projected, career high of 404.

Josh and Neil move back towards where we think they belong, with projected rankings of 150 and 400 respectively - how tidy!

A look at the statistics for Miles' loss earlier in the week shows clearly what went wrong - his service collapsed. In his 9 service games, Miles served 10 double faults, meaning that, effectively, he began each service game 0-15 down, whereas his opponent was double-faultless. In total, Miles served 60 points, winning less than half. It doesn't look as though that was because he had to serve 'on the edge' against an opponent playing at the top of his game, for Miles was able to win a third of his adversary's service points, more or less par for the course in a close match. Over to you, coach.

Bethan, you've just dropped in my estimation! From my previous ranking as your number one fan, I've now fallen to ... number one.

Yes, I was talking doubles (I had presumed that went without saying - but, obviously not - as they'd both gone out of the singles at the beginning of the week and, moreover, they won their doubles semi yesterday!!)