H&H have indeed turned up here. They are seeded 4 and will do battle with Berlocq and Foggy (ARG/ITA) in the 1st round.
And that will be the third & final match on the Grandstand Court today, with play in the first (Berlocq vs Marcos Daniel (BRA) in the singles) kicking off at 16.00 BST.
Disappointing loss as Berlocq and Fognini are solid clay court players, but won't get much higher than 70 at best in the rankings, and haven't got a great doubles pedigree, so to lose 2 and 2 to them isn't a great score at all.
I'm sure Fognini will get much higher than 70 (unless you're taking about doubles ranking)! He is still quite young and has been a Tour player for only about a year. Maybe not at his current level of tennis, but he'll go up with time.
Plus there are too many weak clay events to choose from!!
I'm sure Fognini will get much higher than 70 (unless you're taking about doubles ranking)! He is still quite young and has been a Tour player for only about a year. Maybe not at his current level of tennis, but he'll go up with time.
Plus there are too many weak clay events to choose from!!
Weakest event this week is Indianapolis, which is the hard court ATP event (but Amersfoot, Kitzbuhl and Umag are also among the 5 weakest events of the season)
Don't see anything in his game that particularly impresses me, and he isn't as good as Montanes, for instance, who seems to be the best of these clay court types, and he's only peaked at around 50ish - he could reach that kind of level, but he'll do it via challengers rather than ATP events, unless he improves a lot.
I think Indy is better this week. Cutwise it isn't, but Amersfoort and Kitzy have a terrible dearth of top 50 players, which brings the overall quality down.
Why do we even need these clay events? You don't have hard court (forget grass/carpet) events in the main clay season, so who knows!
I think Indy is better this week. Cutwise it isn't, but Amersfoort and Kitzy have a terrible dearth of top 50 players, which brings the overall quality down.
Why do we even need these clay events? You don't have hard court (forget grass/carpet) events in the main clay season, so who knows!
Kitzy is a shocking field for an ISG event, while Amersfoot has always been one of the weaker fields though.
Indianapolis isn't that good, but although the cut is lower, I'll agree it's a better field on the whole.
This is the problem with the 4 tournaments in a week, especially when Blake and Nando are the only top 20 playing.... you get 4 terrible fields, and it means the winners get points that overinflate their ranking (if Del Potro wins this week, he'll go into the top 25 of the rankings...)
Thankfully Kitzy won't be an ISG (or Series 500 or whatever EDV chooses to name it) from next year. The only clay ones will be Valencia, Barca and Acapulco, which is one less than this year.
Thankfully Kitzy won't be an ISG (or Series 500 or whatever EDV chooses to name it) from next year. The only clay ones will be Valencia, Barca and Acapulco, which is one less than this year.
It won't even have a tournament next year, as this is the last Kitzbuhl event.
(Isn't Valencia going to be a new indoor event at the end of the season anyway, so that won't be held on a clay court, but Hamburg, if it losing it's law suit, will be a 500 event, so there will be 3 on a clay court)