Yeah, ATP confirms it. Istomin lost, too, which means he could have had a great chance.
Anyway, I am not too bothered. Hopefully he'll enjoy the time off, have a few good wins in India and take three weeks off if he doesn't make the USO cut.
Then he should start playing the big Challengers in Europe - there's no point in chasing weak points as you'll probably be way ahead of your current level of tennis and eventually you could be in trouble.
Yeah, ATP confirms it. Istomin lost, too, which means he could have had a great chance.
Anyway, I am not too bothered. Hopefully he'll enjoy the time off, have a few good wins in India and take three weeks off if he doesn't make the USO cut.
Then he should start playing the big Challengers in Europe - there's no point in chasing weak points as you'll probably be way ahead of your current level of tennis and eventually you could be in trouble.
Alex has been fairly consistent and has kept going, playing every week virtually, selecting his events pretty carefully, he hasnt yet shown he can really make any inroads into Challengers yet, and I would say 35K challengers is his level at the moment, he might find the step up to super challengers a bit much and given he has a lot to defend he will want to keep on getting on the board, but at least he's adding 5's fairly regularly and spreading out the points to defend load a bit.
Looks like Alex was quite lucky with others dropping points/not overtaking him - he goes up by 15 places to 291, a bit ahead of where he was due if you looked at last week's rankings.
New rankings for players who have a chance of making the cut (these rankings are final, by the way):
Slabba's a bit gutted, feels he should have easily made the cut with chances over past 2 weeks.....struggled with food poisoning against motomura and had 4 match points against ebden in penza, missing forehands on two of them by a couple of inches
still, should be able make it in with withdrawals and us wildcards and that'll be big
I think last time Bladetiger saw him was in Jan 2007 which is probably why he's been so surprised by his rise over past 12 months.....big difference in his game has been the serve which is one of the biggest of the Brits now....I've seen him play matches, reeling off 3 aces a service game.....the backhand has improved a huge amount too
What do you put the improvement down Sheddie....or what does he? Much more so than other players that is, is it just playing and natural development or coaching?
well he's got a really good coach in Nick Weal and he's a worker in the mould of Jamie Baker......the serve came about gradually as a result of a few technical adjustments, lots of gym work and extended training blocks last summer just hitting basket after basket.
It just shows that if you've got the right mental approach to the game and work ethic you can go places