ITF may have screwed Slabba from playing here...not sure why yet
Certainly no sign of his name in the MD. Any news on why?
Good news from the doubles: Chris Eaton & his Estonian partner, Mait Kunnap, have only been & gone & dumped out the Dutch second seeds, de Bakker & van der Duim, 2-6 6-1 [13-11]! The Aussie top seeds, Ball & Feeney, are out, too, having been beaten by Duclos & Matsukevich (CAN/RUS) 4- 6-4 [18-8]! Goody has teamed up with Kravchuk & they are seeded fourth...
Slabba is in Croatia this week, but not in the tournament....why ? read on, neither of us can believe it, how crass is this for a pro tourney
Slabba lost in the quarters to Oger in France last Fri. Now even though he'd entered Zagreb, he had to confirm he was coming to the tourney officials. However, the stupid Croats hadn't put down any contact telephone number for the tournament online not even in the player info sections. The Bressuire tournament office contacted ITF who spent the afternoon trying without success to get through to Zagreb on behalf of Slabba. Slabba emailed the Zagreb tourney but they didn't bother to check their email till after they'd made the draw on Friday night, putting someone else in Alex's place and despite the email having been sent many hours earlier they said "too late, you can't play, we're not doing the draw again".
The ITF have the power to overule the tournament officials and make them do the draw again but it was Friday night, they wanted to go home for the weekend and couldn't be bothered to wait at the office for another hour to sort things out.
Wow, even the LTA aren't that useless! Slabba must be fuming after having paid to go there.
Three things I can't understand though:
1) There are telephone and fax numbers here: http://www.itftennis.com/mens/tournaments/tournamentfactsheet.asp?tournament=1100016978 - the obvious place to look for them, I'd say.
2) If no numbers were there on Friday, couldn't they have used last year's details?
3) How incompetent are the ITF at not managing to get through to anyone on Alex's behalf. Next time, he should pass the details to me - with all the clues there are, I bet I could find a number and get through to them on time, even if there isn't a number on the factsheet.
-- Edited by steven at 20:42, 2008-02-11
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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!
and another point - if josh has got in and clearly the 2 of them have been entering the same events for the last couple of weeks, i'd have thought they'd be talking to each other and josh helping slabba out in some way?