Week 23 - Surbiton Trophy [$ 50K] 2008.

mjd · Challenger qualifying

RE: Week 23 - Surbiton Trophy [$ 50K] 2008.

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

Stircrazy wrote:

Count Zero wrote:

hmm it appears they played twice, beating slabba and eaton 63 64 then bambam and josh 62 67 10-8

I take back my previous post! If that's the case, Slabba & Eaton must've been drafted in as lucky losers in place of Baggy & Bohli! So what happened to Bops & Qureshi? Did they lose to Bamfs & Goody?

Have at last seen the doubles draw sheet! Bamfs & Goody had a walkover agains Bops & Qureshi, then lost to Boggy & Ward! cry

In the bottom half of the draw, Smeets continues to enjoy the reverse (to the Brits) luck of the Aussies: he & Adam Feeney beat Aucks & Delgo 6-3 7-6(3) (

) & then thrashed Golubev & Nishikori 2 & 1 after they had had a walkover against Kuznetsov & Zverev! Their SF opponents will be Arnaud Clément & ERV, who saw off the second seeds, Booty & Fish, 4 & 3! hmm

My money's on Clément & Roger-Vasselin for the title... hmm

Joe Bateman · Social player

News just in:

The Surbiton Trophy will be played on the grass courts at the Surbiton Racket & Fitness Club on Friday where play will get under way at 11am.

Lets hope for good weather, still no oop!

Joe Bateman · Social player

Oop is now out:

http://www.atptennis.com/en/common/TrackIt.asp?file=http://www.atptennis.com/1/posting/2008/720/op.pdf

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

Joe Bateman wrote:

News just in:

The Surbiton Trophy will be played on the grass courts at the Surbiton Racket & Fitness Club on Friday where play will get under way at 11am.

Lets hope for good weather, still no oop!

Actually, there is! See here. wink

jazar · Junior player

shame they couldnt have played there today really

Joe Bateman · Social player

jazar wrote:

shame they couldnt have played there today really

Yes strange decision, and why I didn't go today. Half a schedule wasn't really worth it, not to mention no media access at the tennis centre today.

Anyway, great to see you have signed up here too Jazar, have you been to the event this year? You are a photographer too aren't you?

jazar · Junior player

i was at surbiton today. i am a photographer sometimes, though i didnt take any pics today

Sheddie · administrator

Long time coming but my impressions on Wednesday's action:

Firstly was hugely impressed by the NTC, you don't realise just how quality the facilities are until you actually see them up close....if Andy's comments are true and there really aren't many British players utilising them then that's criminal. However 1 thing Andy may not have taken into account is that unlike him, most Brits can't afford to only play 15wks of the year and so are spending their time travelling from futures to futures week-in, week-out instead of training at the NTC

Was a lot more people watching than I expected, most of them were coaches,lta people, friends, family, ballgirls, younger players based there but were a number of older people who didn't seem to fit the mentioned categories so maybe some spectators did sneak in

Boggo bt Zverev: Boggo was always in complete control, moving the ball into the spaces with fluent timing and a few wonderful touches at the net. He was much more comfortable on the surface than Zverev who didn't impress me at all. If he can make the top 100 then that should give a lot of encouragement to the Brits as he looked very ordinary, made a lot of errors and struggled with what Boggo was doing. Brad seemed to have prepared him well tactically for the match, the angles he was getting caused Zverev numerous problems. Broke 4 times in all, some great passing shots.....just the 1 wobble when he got broken at 4-2 in the 2nd but broke again next game.

However, I can see why Boggo has struggled a lot on hard in the past....he's not a power player and doesn't have the huge serve which many guys do in the challengers, relying on brilliant timing and ball-striking ability but the result is he has to work so hard for points as he can't just muscle players off the court.

Mike Raphael was watching, seemed to know most of the players, didn't find out who he's working with now though

Brad didn't mingle, watched from the office balconies above

Didn't see any of Josh's match but to beat Evans that easily was so impressive.....Evans arrived swamped in suncream, wasn't really much point given how long he was on court

Anderson bt Bamford: Neil just got outclassed out there, didn't have the strength of shot to trouble Anderson and didn't make enough first serves. On the slowish bouncy hard his natural serve-volley game was ripped to shreds. Anderson's my pick to win the tournament, could be one to watch over next few weeks....just giant serve and forehand

Slabba bt Okun: I only saw it till 4-5 first set and it was close....Slabba missed a 0-30 at 3-3, missing 3 returns and was furious with himself.....likewise at 4-4 he had bp and the linesjudge called double fault but the umpire corrected the call....Okun got 2 serves again and hammered a big one, again really frustrating. Slabba started a bit slowly but when I left, he was starting to get into it....really hammering the serve and forehand, getting into net when possible. Backhand is improving, more consistent than last year.......Okun looked quite good, serving well and constructing the points intelligently, moving Slabba out of position with little risk, made a few forehand errors though...........looks like Slabba really stepped it up in the next two which was great !!

Kuznetsov bt Sweeting: Not the most entertaining match on display, two Bollittieri style ball-bashers, typical American hard-courters. Kuznetsov's forehand was poor early on but Sweeting just fell apart in the 2nd........Kuznetsov's coach was getting more and more frustrated with his charge's inability to deliver their pre-match tactics and remarked at the end that he'd pulled out most of his few remaining hairs

Smeets bt Capdeville: Both complete nutcases who lost it completely at multiple times. Smeets has a British coach who was at the end of his tether with his charge's "choking." Apparently he'd lost 10 straight matches before this. Watching Smeets blow a 5-1 final set lead and multiple mps with some strange tennis, almost showboating. The coach was saying to Barry Cowan that he just couldn't take it any longer, he'd been playing sensible tennis and then just gets tight and stops thinking, starts double-faulting, going for ridiculous drive volleys etc. Smeets nearly blew a 6-1 lead in the decisive tiebreak but Capdeville missed an easy shot at 6-5.

Sheddie · administrator

steven wrote:

Apparently Sheddie went off with a cute Ukrainian hours ago and hasn't been seen since, least of all by Stakh who looks somewhat annoyed ...

Talking of this.....Stakh and his gf were at it again courtside, wasn't quite as x-rated as on sunday but not too far off. Strange thing is how it always happens when watching Bubka. For some reason they seem to find something very erotic about his game ???

steven · Tennis legend

I'm sure there's a really terrible joke about Bubka's father's occupation wating to be found there, but I'm determined not to look for it.

Sheddie · administrator

where's Bladetiger when you need him ?

Sheddie · administrator

Goodall looks to have put in best performance today, pushing Anderson to 5&4 was pretty good

Disappointing Slabba's match was so one-sided but I wonder whether his late finish last night has a lot to do with it....he was on about 12.30 today so not much time to recover and discuss tactics with coach etc. The Okun win would have been huge for him, it was a big match so coming down from that to play rd2 would have been tough

Big disappointment from Boggo but c'est la vie in the Bogfan world.....after yesterday's performance FD & I were talking confidently of him making semis at least......Levy's very experienced though and has been top 30....I think Boggo would definately have won on grass but on slow hard Levy's courtcraft could have just frustrated Boggo in the end. Stakhovsky's won an ATP this year but Levy really did brush him aside very comfortably on Wednesday

mjd · Challenger qualifying

I think Slabinsky did very well, it has to be remembered that he is relatively new at challenger level, having only entered about half dozen such events in the last 12 months whereas Dancevic started this year having dropped in world rankings from 65 to 73. Therefore by defeating Okun ranked 271 and avoiding a bagel against Dancevic Slabba did extremely well, in no way was this a disappointing week!

steven · Tennis legend

I think that's true, what happened yesterday shouldn't take too much away from how well Wednesday went.

Josh had an excellent win in R1 and pushed his opponent closer than I expected in R2.

Slabba had an even better win in R1 and was always going to need a miracle against Dancevic, who would have been seeded had he not gone through qualifying, though it would have been nice to see him win a few more games.

Bam Bam clearly had a good week by qualifying and some of the others could have come through qualifying had some of the sections not been of such a high standard.

Boggo, too, had an excellent R1 win and if we'd got one quarter-finalist like last year, that would have been quite reasonable given the strength of the field.

But what makes this week seem so disappointing is that Boggo gave himself the chance to start turning his year around but then blew it against someone I have little doubt he is more than capable of beating, just as (by his own efforts) his draw had opened up.

In the end, it's points that matter and GB has gained less than half as many from Surbiton as last year, 17 v 25, with week 23 points gained elsewhere the same as last year so far.

Of course, it IS all a bit random - had Jamie Baker been able to be there, and got to the QFs or SFs, that might have made all the difference!

Edit: in fairness to the Brits there this week, it's probably also worth adding that:

- in 2006, we only got 10 points from Surbiton, with no qualifiers and just Bloomers & Big Arv making R2
- in 2005, we got just 5, with no qualifiers, Del getting to R2 and no. 1 seed Greg going out to Bracciali in R1 (what a dire week that was!)
- in 2004, we got 26, nearly half of them through Greg reaching the QFs, with Marray (R2), Hilton (Q+R2) and Flan (Q) getting the rest
- in 2003, perhaps the year those of us feeling disappointed now best remember, the Brits scored a massive 61 points, with Boggo getting more than half of them when he beat Niemeyer, Bastl & Karlovic to reach the Final and the rest coming from Greg (QFs), Childs (Q+R2), Bloomers (R2) and Del (Q)
- and that followed another dire year, 2002, when Big Arv got all 5 of our points, beating (even) Big(ger) Ivo 6-7(2) 7-6(6) 7-6(9) before going out to Taylor Dent

I guess that puts it into perspective a bit more!

-- Edited by steven at 10:25, 2008-06-06