Week 18 - Futures F4 (15K) - Bournemouth, UK

Drew · May 1, 2008

RE: Week 18 - Futures F4 (15K) - Bournemouth, UK

Madeline · Admin:Moderator + Tennis Legend

steven wrote:

Yes, green clay is what they use in the US too. I know it's not as slow as red clay and I imagine it being more compacted and less dusty.

Houston changed to red clay, as used in Europe, this year, I read somewhere.

Yorkie · Lower Club Player

I tell you what for Wardy to sail past Cox and only drop 5 games he must like this surface!!!

BRING ON NILAND

Salmon · Tennis legend

I guess slow hard is Ward's favourite surface and this is close to it, so he must be having a good chance against Niland.

DJ · County player

All three lads lost, though Dan managed to win a set.

James · Satellite level

Where did you get the info from DJ?

steven · Tennis legend

Sadly, we were brought back to reality today in Bournemouth, with a few of the remaining Brits on the wrong side of thrashings and nobody surviving the day. cry

However, if we'd been offered three quarter-finalists here this time last week, I'm sure we'd have taken it! biggrin

It was a really good week for Sean Thornley, Dan Evans put up a good fight in his QF and James at least reached his seeding position, though I'm disappointed that he didn't beat Niland.

As someone (DJ?) said, James has been remarkably consistent at winning a round or two over the last year (I think it's the first time a Brit outside the top 100 has had more than 18 counting scores in a very long time), but he does need to start reaching semis and Finals more frequently in order to improve his ranking significantly from where it is now.

L16: (7) James Ward WR 488 beat (Q) Daniel Cox WR 939 by 1 & 4 smile

L16: (Q) Joshua Milton WR 1256 lost to (8) Ludovic Walter (FRA) WR 500 by 2 & 0 cry

L16: (Q) Matthew Illingworth WR 1055 lost to Pierre Metenier (FRA) WR 654 by 1 & 0 cry

L16: (Q) Sean Thornley WR 1259 beat Petar Popovic (FRA) WR 573 by 3-6 6-4 6-1 biggrin

L16: (Q) Dan Smethurst WR 1201 lost to (5) Pavol Cervenak (SVK) WR 474 by 2 & 2 cry

L16: (WC) Daniel Evans WR 1342 beat (WC) Marcus Willis WR 1150 by 3-6 6-4 6-3 biggrin

QF: (7) James Ward WR 488 lost to (1) Conor Niland (IRL) WR 329 by 3 & 3 cry

QF: (Q) Sean Thornley WR 1259 lost to Pierre Metenier (FRA) WR 654 by 4 & 1 cry

QF: (WC) Daniel Evans WR 1342 lost to (5) Pavol Cervenak (SVK) WR 474 by 4-6 6-3 6-3 cry

helki · Futures qualifying

Not all doom and gloom however, Skupski and Walter reached the doubles final, as did Seator and Smethurst. The former running out 7-5 6-2 winners and the latter, once again overcoming slightly higher seeds in Harri and Timo, to win 6-3 2-6 [10-4]. Well done guys.

-- Edited by helki at 19:20, 2008-05-01

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

There's still the doubles, where we'll be treated to a three-quarters Brit final, Skups & Walter having won by 5 & 2 & Seator & Smethurst by 6-3 2-6 [10-4]!

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

helki wrote:

Not all doom and gloom however, Skupski and Walter reached the doubles final, as did Seator and Smethurst. The former running out 7-5 6-2 winners and the latter, once again overcoming slightly higher seeds in Harri and Timo, to win 6-3 2-6 [10-4]. Well done guys.

-- Edited by helki at 19:20, 2008-05-01

I see the roles have been reversed today!

steven · Tennis legend

Good for the doubles pairs, but as usual, I'm left thinking I'd swap 10 doubles Finals for one of them to reach a singles semi. (that's probably about what the prize money difference per player is too!)

DJ · County player

James wrote:

Where did you get the info from DJ?

Sorry to have been tardy in responding, James; I had gone off the site during the evening and have only just come back on. I found the results on the BBC's tennis results website - it's often the fastest with British results.
Enjoy your new toy!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/tennis/uk_results/default.stm

DJ · County player

steven wrote:

Good for the doubles pairs, but as usual, I'm left thinking I'd swap 10 doubles Finals for one of them to reach a singles semi. (that's probably about what the prize money difference per player is too!)

Steven's usually fairly upbeat about British tennis, but he's not too interested in doubles, as he often tells us. smile

Some of us, though, are thoroughly enjoying the renaissance in British doubles achievements which we've seen in the past couple of years - Jamie has given doubles a much more interesting public face, and has pulled several others along with him. Compare the ranking levels of our doubles guys with those of our singles players - I find that really uplifting. There's a thesis in this somewhere - anyone in their final year of a sports science course looking for a post-grad topic?
To offer some rankings snippets for those interested, Edward's and Dan's achievements this week zoom them up the lists: Dan moves up some 300 places, from 1266 to circa 960. Edward's move, whilst less dramatic in simple terms, is still impressive - 461 to around 428.
Ken, though, is caught in a similar situation to James Ward in singles (see my and Steven's comments above), though in Ken's case, it's not a matter of not going deeply enough, he's now stymied by the level of tournament in which he plays. He has a 'discard' score of 6, so needs to get to finals of 10K events to gain a net 2 points. His finals appearance in this week's 15K is worth 12 points, but only 6 net, and now he's at a fairly rarified level (top 300), increases of half-a-dozen points make little difference to ranking positions (292 to 287, provisionally).
The answer is clearly a regular move to the Challenger tour, but without a commensurate improvement in his singles results, Ken's going to find it difficult to get into qualifiers, and his singles career would just fade away. I hope Ken decides it's too soon to give up on his promising singles, though there have been some unforeseen stumbles of late; moreover, Steven would be upset.

steven · Tennis legend

DJ wrote:
I hope Ken decides it's too soon to give up on his promising singles, though there have been some unforeseen stumbles of late; moreover, Steven would be upset.

Thank you for your concern wink

and I apologise for becoming a broken record on the subject of doubles wins not providing much consolation for lack of progress in singles. Perhaps you will indulge me one more time while I try to explain how I really feel about it, and then I'll shut up about it. (probably wink

)

Good analysis re Ken's doubles ranking. If you're a Challenger-level doubles player and a Futures-level singles player, I don't see anything wrong with mixing Futures with Challenger qualifying as far as singles is concerned, or even exclusively Challenger qualifying if he was good enough to make it into the main draws relatively frequently.

In that case, his singles points might not build up quite as fast as if he stuck mainly to Futures, but it would be worth it for him and Bloomers to be able to be a regular Challenger doubles team (assuming it's not long before Bloomers gets back to getting DAs into Challengers relatively frequently) and once he was reaching Challenger main draws on a regular basis, he wouldn't have the same Futures->Challenger transition issues as many other Brits have had.

However, for this to be a good plan, he needs to be capable of qualifying for Challengers more than once in a blue moon, and he clearly isn't there yet. I just hope he doesn't give up on singles before he gets to that stage, because that would be a sad loss to GB tennis.

Re. doubles in general, don't get me wrong, it's great that our players are doing well in doubles, it's great to have doubles players in the top 100 and I think players like Jamie Murray and Ross Hutchins made absolutely the right decision to specialise. However, the last thing I want to see is the majority of our players deciding to go down the same route if they have chances of being successful in singles.

Doubles is brilliant to play socially, no question about that, and can be a lot of fun to watch good players play, but one of the best things for me about tennis at the top level is that it is one of very few gladiatorial one-on-one sports that doesn't involve trying to cause your opponent physical injury.

Given that most top players will have chosen tennis over team sports, it's no wonder that the vast majority of really good players care far more about their singles rankings. For me, doubles rankings outside the top 50 or so depend far too much on how lucky you are with partners, whether the opponents you meet really care how they do in doubles, all that kind of thing. That's why I get more excited about a player reaching a quarter or semi in singles than winning a doubles Final. Indeed, in terms of prize money per player, a doubles title is about equivalent to a singles QF at Challenger level.

So, if you tell me player X has reached the singles semi and won the doubles title, I'll be double biggrin biggrin ing as much as you, but if he won the doubles title after going out in R1 in singles (and that happens on a regular basis), I'll be the broken record going "if only ..." wink

Bladetiger · Pro player

steven wrote:

Good for the doubles pairs, but as usual, I'm left thinking I'd swap 10 doubles Finals for one of them to reach a singles semi. (that's probably about what the prize money difference per player is too!)

Agree 1000%

I know you cant actually have 1000% in this context but I wanted to express how strongly I agree.

I cant tell you how much it pi**es me off when we're all done in singles by the quarter final stage but are celebrating three guys reaching the doubles final.

A 10K doubles final is reached by wanting to be there half the time when the rest are ready to get offski when they are out of the singles.