Oh yes - that was a "punch the air and hope nobody saw me" moment Brilliant.

The crowd are now chanting at Eaton - "are you Rafa in disguise"

Brilliant win for Chris, and even if not by ranking, this is the best win of his career.

He didn't let losing the first set on the long TB and wasting 3 SP's get to him, and kept it going well in the next 2 sets and looked the better player by the fact he was in trouble on serve once, while got to deuce quite a bit on Minar's serve.

Good luck to him in the last round (and Patience drops the second set in a TB)

Bloomers and Eaton now have a 1/16 chance of making the main draw as a LL, now that the ITF has changed the LL system to an open draw with all the losers of the final qualifying round.... just got to find some players to withdraw to give them a chance, but hopefully they'll win and eliminate this possibility

(and if the LTA says anything about their WC system because 'technically' Eaton shouldn't have got one after losing the in the semi-finals....)

fantastic well done to chris and richard to super wins lets hope they can continue it on... thursday?

I keep forgetting how young (20) that Eaton still is. His name has been going around for a while so you tend to think hes 23/24 but far from it.

Hope this is not a 'Grass' flash-in-the-pan run but that he develops late somewhat like Tigger did...Tim didnt break the top 100 until he was 21.

(Tim was ranked 137 just after his 21st birthday)

FQR : Chris Eaton GBR WR659 v Olivier Patience FRA WR162

FQR : Richard Bloomfield GB WR386 v Alexander Peya AUT WR194

Never played each other before.

Probably Thursday.

-- Edited by Drew at 22:51, 2008-06-17

I couldn't get on the board earlier this evening so a belated congratulations to Richard and Chris, with good luck wishes for the final round.

What a lovely surprise to come back to, really well done from Eaton.

Does Wimbledon qualifying still have 5 sets in the fqr? If so it'll be a slightly different kettle of fish for Eaton at least, his first 5 set match I presume. I'd say Bloomers has a good chance, and that Eaton has no chance, but then I would've said that about Eaton's match today so I'm hoping for a different result!

I was there today and saw most of Bloomers match and all of Eaton's match.

Unfortunately for Bloomers there were no chants comparing his opponent to the great Derakhshani, as to begin with I was pretty much the only person watching, although towards the middle of the 2nd set I think the crowd might have reached double figures. The break at 1-0 was actually Bloomers getting more treatment for his knee, not Oger. I have no idea how Oger managed to win 0 and 0 yesterday, unless Jones couldn't run and was playing left-handed. He seemed to have no weapons to hurt Bloomers at all, who was hitting winners and coming to the net at will. Earlier in the day I asked him how his knee was. He said it hurt quite a bit in the first round, but managed to come through and he would see what it felt like today. It didn't appear to trouble him at all, although he did have it wrapped up.

I'd never seen Eaton play before, so was quite looking forward to the match. He never looked like losing and had the best serve I've seen out of any of the current Brits (including Murray.) Whenever he got in trouble on his serve, he would just serve huge aces, and the only reason he got broken in the 1st was because he hit 3 DFs. He was unlucky in the TB, as Minar played a great point, comfortably reaching quite a decent dropshot. However for the rest of the match it was just a case of whether or not Eaton would be able to break Minar, as he certainly didn't look like being broken himself.

I saw a bit of Goodall, but he just didn't return enough of Kendrick's big serves.