I was down at the NTC today after arriving at Surbiton to be told play had been moved to Roehampton, some good matches on offer as well.

Bamford Vs Eaton was a good match but I was surprised at Eatons lack of ability to read what Bamford was doing, Neil continued to use the same plays on serve & groundies through out, Greg Rusedski was next to me pulling out what little hair he has left at Eatons in-ability to read what was happening, still the competitor as ever, we even spoke about a comeback  !!....its not gonna happen!!!
 
Marray was not his usual self & had he been sharper at the net I feel he would have taken not only the set but the match.
I feel the LTA have done a great job again by stepping in to help out with the tournament, it really threw practise for the likes of Murray, O'Brien, Baltacha etc in to chaos to accommodate these matches so well done LTA.

In answer to the spectator issue, there were no stewards, security, safety officers etc in place to cater for hundreds of spectators. If anything were to happen you could imagine what *hit the LTA would be in.

Whenever I have been to a tournament the umpires keep the scores (and stats presumably) using some sort of hand-held device. Are these the same sort of devices used at ATP tournaments where live scoring is available? If they are, then surely a similar solution could be used to provide the data for a website to pick up in real time or at intervals? This not feel either technically challenging or expensive. It should even be portable and therefore moved between tournaments.

live stream like cherbourg, u remember the one Ogani played at. just a cam focused on the scoreboard.

Streamng is OK but generally only practicable for one match, whereas livescore can cover any number of courts in one window.

mjd wrote:

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Amazing stats for number of views to this thread!

I guess thats what happens when LTA miss out on supporting their own event they seem to think that there is no interest in British tennis other than when Andy is playing - how wrong are they?
10,000 hits here for this $50k challenger and we havent even reached round 1 yet! 10 times more views than Andy gets.
LTA publicity should think about this carefully, they are missing out, afterall how difficult is it to have live(ish) scoring? And why stop at challengers? If they really want to increase interest in tennis why not cover futures as well?

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Without wanting to rain on anyone's parade, it would be interesting to know how many different people this means have viewed the thread, because each of us can probably get through quite a few clicks a day just refreshing to wait for live scores. For less frequently updated threads, most people probably refresh the recent posts view and only go in there if there is something new, but I imagine on threads like this some of us just refresh the thread itself, thus adding to the views count.

Having said that, nearly 10000 hits before the main draw has even started (and that's just for the men's part of the tournament) is pretty impressive by any standards and must mean that the number of people viewing it is in at least the hundreds - perhaps even a thousand or more if the frequent viewers are only making up part of the total and there are lots of people viewing it just a couple of times per day.

Possibly the LTA think that live scoring and frequently updated web coverage of an event aren't worth doing if 'only' 100s of people are interested. To that, I'd say it may be true, but unless you give it a proper go and do it frequently, you'll never know what the true potential is.

There must be lots of people who have been to a Challenger, say, and would like to continue to follow some of the players they have seen there, but soon give up in the face of a virtual information blackout. I can't imagine that many persevere to the extent that the people here do, but if it was made a bit easier, who knows how many more people would maintain an interest. In the end, that would feed through to higher attendance at these events, more interest from sponsors, and so on, all to the LTA's benefit.

Thanks for your insight into the background of the site and court switch for this event Goldenslam. Its something we "fans" often forget, but finding a way to make the tournament the same for everyone and safe for spectators is very important.

However, I hope that if play continues at NTC for further rounds that whoever was due to steward etc at Surbiton could make the same journey as the players, allowing spectators in.

I bet the players are enjoying the facilities at Roehampton a little more as well! I wonder if anyone will do a Tsonga this year and play the Surbs final and Queens qualies all at the same time winning through them all!

Are spectators allowed to go and watch the play at the NTC today?