Times article about Steve Darcis's time in UK Futures

steven · Tennis legend

Times article about Steve Darcis's time in UK Futures

Count Zero · Tennis legend

but didnt darcis used to have a higher ranking b4 slipping back down?

the article seems tosuggest he kinda did it in one spell. but he almost made it dropped back then made it again.

will be interesting to see how he holds up tho, obviusly some big points will be needed to defend when amersfoort comes round.

Howver he also benefits from have a all court game, he has won titles on clay and indoor courts. the british traning set up which seems to exclude clay means that our players are at a distinct disadvantge in that repsect.

still hopefully boggo can do a darcis. (Darcis bt boggo when they met in Nov 2005, Eckental Ch (GER), Carpet, R16: (8)Darcis(165) d Bogdanovic(210) 6-7(8) 7-6(5) 6-4)

steven · Tennis legend

Count Zero wrote:
but didnt darcis used to have a higher ranking b4 slipping back down?

the article seems tosuggest he kinda did it in one spell. but he almost made it dropped back then made it again.

He did make it almost into the top 150 at the end of 2005, but nowhere near where he is now. He then dropped back to about 500 by the end of 2006 and didn't reach the 150 level again until 18 months after he first got close to breaking through it, i.e. mid-2007.

Hopefully this can be the Boggo story too, but I'd rather he didn't drop all the way to about 500 first!

Salmon · Tennis legend

I don't know how our players are supposed to learn a lesson from that. Darcis was a talented player ranked in the 200s who suffered a bad injury in 2006 (I remember hearing that he was walking on crutches) and his ranking dropped. Although his taking the Tour by storm shocked us all, I don't think that there was anything spectacular in his overcoming the Futures ranking in a few weeks, was there? People like Machado and Prodon have done it better than him, in fact (although they haven't cracked the top after that).
Of course I admire how much Darcis has done in a few months time but its not correct to say that this was the case of a Futures player becoming a Tour player in a few months. Now if today Federer was to get injured (may that never happen!) and after a year out, he decided to play a Futures (like Joachim Johansson did after one of his countless periods away from the game) and in two months, he won Wimbledon. Would you say that he's a Futures player who won a Slam and our players should do the shame?

Very nice article otherwise and I didn't realise that Darcis was so short. 'Short' as in short for a tennis player, of course!

-- Edited by Greenleaf at 15:54, 2008-05-09

Count Zero · Tennis legend

yes thats a good point, i think the same, you would see a player come out of the amercian college system and be 'fully devloped' and would expect them, or at least be not suprised, if they moved through the futures scene quickly. But for a lot of the younger players the futures is a learning experince, playing in different conditions, differnt countires and against a wide varity of opponets.

if any talented player dropped back to futures you would expect them to zoom through, look at baker recently, just a shame he got ill so we didnt get to see where it would head. i think if alex were forced to play futures he would win too (but he si fighitng hard to prevent that)