Cakl seems suprisingly low ranked. Has he been injured?

No, they're obviously doing a Pat Cash and calling any men's or women's event that isn't a main tour event a "Futures".

Bad draws for Jonny and Slabs but a decent one for Josh. I like Mankad a lot, too, so I don't know who I want as the winner.



Bloomers and Ken are through to the final round of qualies.

Qualifiers Round 1
J Kinsella (GB) bt T Bradshaw (GB) 76 (5) 75
(Q3)R Bloomfield (GB) bt A Watt (GB) 64 64
E Corrie (GB) bt K Brassington (GB) 64 64
(Q6) K Skupski (GB) bt P Grandjean (LUX) 64 62

QR2
A Smith (IND) bt J Kinsella (GB) 67 (7) 64 76 (5)
(Q3) R Bloomfield bt I Cojanu (ROM) 76 (6) 63
(Q6) K Skupski (GB) bt E Corrie 61 64

QR3
(Q3) R Bloomfield (GB) v (WC)D Clancy (IRE)
(Q6) K Skupski (GB) v (Q4)T Cakl (CZE) 

-- Edited by Bladetiger at 21:15, 2008-06-29

Cakl (v Skupski, FQR) Beat Jamie Baker 2 & 2 in Auckland qualifying earlier this year, so that's a tough one, though Bloomers beat him in Wrexham a year earlier.

Glancy (v Bloomers, FQR) on the other hand had a 0-6 record before today, including a 0 & 5 loss to Burnham Arlidge last week, so how he managed to beat a seed today is beyond me - I don't want to tempt fate, but ...

Niland (v Slabba), who has a 50-22 career record against Brits, won the Limerick Future this week and beat Slabba 1 & 3 in Nottingham last September, though Josh and Jamie B have beaten him recently and Slabba beat him 7-6(5) 3-6 7-5 in a Satellite way back in 2005. Btw, seeing Slabba and Eaton playing ther Bryans at Wimby earlier this week, if I'd been told they were 300 places apart in the rankings at the start of the week without knowing who they were, I wouldn't have guessed which way round it was!

Mankad (v Marray) had a career high of 222 back in 2005 and was the runner-up in Limerick (nice to see the Brits avoiding the in-form players - erk!) - an infamous Brit-basher, Mankad has gone off the boil a bit recently (that Final in Limerick notwithstanding) but is always a dauting opponent. Jonny is one of the few Brits who hasn't played him before, though they have met across a doubles net a few times.

Coelho (v Goodall) lost to Dan Cox in Nottingham qualifying a couple of weeks ago but doesn't tend to lose to the Challenger-level Brits, while beating most of the rest.

I don't think the Brits have been given bad draws here at all - this is a 75K challenger, and all 3 of them have got a player outside of the top 300, so if that is a bad draw, I'm interested in knowing what a good draw is, especially when the cut is Slabba at 324.

If Cox can beat Coelho, then Goodall should beat him, and I'd be surprised if he didn't, but Nielsen could well be lurking in the second round which always poses a problem for the Brits.

Slabba doesn't have a great draw against Niland, especially as he's the local boy and in some good form, but as the last DE he can't expect anything great, and he's only 20 spots above him in the rankings anyway. It's not a match where he'd be the favourite, but the kind of match he has to win if he's ever going to move up the rankings, or with all the points he has to defend, stay where he is.

Mankad is beatable for Jonny and barring his good run recently I don't recall him having done a lot for a while, but still he probably won't be the favourite.

Well done to Bloomers and Skupski on getting the last round, and although Bloomers's second match looked quite close, Cojanu may be a big server and so it won't be easy to break him on the surface.

Shame Jonny couldn't join them, going down in a 3rd set TB, but another good effort against someone who massively outranks him, but needs to win these matches (3rd set TB this week, last week a 16-14 TB)

Bloomers should qualify, and I think Skupski can join him as well, but won't be an easy task for him.

Solid draws for the qualifiers actually, with 2 of the getting each other, but I guess Bloomers/Skupski won't get this draw. That said, Skupski should have beaten Fischer at Surbiton (that volley...), and Zverev hasn't impressed me yet, and retired against Stan the man at Wimbledon, so isn't that fit at the moment.

Strong field, I won't say that I'll definitely make it in to see some of it because I didn't make the Dublin futures and I've got a busy week... but it certainly is a tempting field of players.