johnnylad wrote:

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oh yeah!

I wonder when he will start using his protected ranking?

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That's an interesting question. I'm not surprised he hasn't used it yet, since he needs to be in a position where he's likely to win a main draw match before it's worth it - obviously he has now done that, but he got about as good a R1 draw as he could have hoped for this week.

The other problem here is that because a PR doesn't affect seedings, he needs to find a main draw that his PR would be high enough to get him direct entry into - there's no point using it for a qualifying draw that he could have got into anyway when a PR doesn't affect seeding.

His PR will be about 590 (depending on exactly how the ATP count the weeks in the first three months of his injury) - that would easily have got him into Exmouth this week, but because he tends to play in Spain where the Futures draws tend to have a bit more strength in depth, it would have been touch and go whether it got him a DA into Loja this week and it wouldn't even been close to getting him into the 15K in Malaga next week.

I think we'll probably see him using it to get into some of the Spanish 10Ks in the not too distant future.

Edit: Morgan's PR would easily get him into the week 16 Future in Melilla because it's on hard courts so most of the Spaniards have given it a miss. He hasn't entered it using his PR though, but hopefully there will be other opportunities like that to use it in Spain or maybe Italy (another country he used to play in quite frequently) before too long.

-- Edited by steven at 11:21, 2008-04-02