National tennis official expresses sadness over the early exit of home players ... quick to defend the national tennis association and blame the players for not playing enough overseas or practising enough ... says "how many of them can you see on the court practicing; they lack confidence and are not ready to burn their energy" ... implores home players to "show more professionalism" ...

Before you go "Oh no, Roger Draper's been talking to the press about Wimby, and the Bebo Two again," I should point out that the tennis official in question was Rotimi Akinloye talking about the Nigerians in Ogbe!

See http://ogbehardcourtchampionship.com/news.php?news_id=14

He also said: Its a sad situation; the parents even are not helping matters.  Most players are here with their parents who spend a lot of time to train and encourage them, but such things dont exist here in Nigeria."

I know Fitzy's still quite young, but I didn't realise he'd taken his mum there with him.  

Thanks for keeping us in the picture, Edward, your comments make very interesting reading, painting a picture of the young pro's life that we'd otherwise not see. Best of luck with the rest of this week, the visit to Cote D'Ivoire and, indeed, your career!
As Steven said earlier, we're fairly confident that a win today would take you into the next-but-one edition of 'Tennis - the top 500', but I'm sure that's of more interest to we self-confessed geeks than to yourself; you could put our nerves at rest by winning tomorrow, too, of course!

steven wrote:

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 Most players are here with their parents

I know Fitzy's still quite young, but I didn't realise he'd taken his mum there with him.  

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It's maybe not as far-fetched as we might think, Steven, Fitzy's very first posts mentioned that his Dad was in Karachi (or was it Islamabad?) with him!

(Yeah, I know it was because his Dad works there, but that spoils the story, so I've just ignored it!!)

Well done Edward !!!

Fingers crossed for another win

Nice One Edward, and congrats. Now for fitzy to give us a nice suprise

Congrats Edward  hopefully it'll either be enough (more likely than not, it will be) or you can win tomorrow to make absolutely sure. Carry on like this and I imagine you'll quickly leave 500 far behind you, like Slabba did after he got through that barrier at the end of last year, especially since you've only got 5 more points to defend in the first half of this year.

It's a pity Miles went out yesterday - we could have had three of you getting there in the same week! Still, mustn't be greedy ...  and Miles losing does mean there's one less player who could edge you out of the 500 and that you'll be back in the top 10 in GB. I imagine that's even more irrelevant to you, though I guess it might help your chances of getting WCs for Surbiton/Wimby Q (or better) if you're intending to be here for the grass court season.

I'd like to echo DJ's thanks as well. Most of the time, we have to make do with seeing results, and if we're lucky being able to follow live scores and the odd fuzzy live stream from ATPs or Challengers and so often you end up wondering why A lost to lower-ranked B, what on earth happened in the 2nd set, etc - it's really cool having someone putting their matches into context a bit and your comments come across as very balanced for someone talking about their own matches.

Fitzy mate! Well done! You took him close!