Jonathan Marray and Richard Bloomfield are aiming high this week and are are here in qualifying. Jonny has drawn (8)Lukas Dloughy (CZE) in Rd 1 with (3)Jiri Vanek possibly in final round. Richard has drawn Ivan Dodig (CRO) for Rd 1 but in his group are (6)Benedikt Dorsch and (4)Benjamin Becker
Top seed in qualifying is Vliegen, WR96 and the no 1 seed in main draw for this his home event will be Roger Federer.
Good luck to them for having a go here, but it's going to be very tough for them to qualify given the number of quality players in the draw.
Bloomers has got just about the best draw he could so hopefully could get through round 1 (and with 560 for winning a match, probably covering travel costs) it would be a good to see him get the win.
Tougher draw for Jonny as Dlouhy is a good player, and will be used the the serve/volley style of play given he's a doubles specialist, and I'd be surprised if Jonny did win
QR1: Richard Bloomfield WR 292 beat Ivan Dodig (CRO) WR 404 by 5 & 1
QR2: Richard Bloomfield WR 292 v (q6) Benedikt Dorsch (GER) WR 163
Dorsch has reached the semis of 6 of his last 8 Challengers, winning one of them. He beat the Wardinator 4 & 4 (a very respectable score for Alex!) in Spain in June just before setting off on the Challenger run and beat Boggo 4 & 2 in Lanzarote in 2006, but he is 0-2 against Josh, including a two t/b loss to him in USO Q in 2006. Those results give mixed messages, but it looks to me like it's going to be very tough but not completely unwinnable for Richard.
-- Edited by steven at 11:41, 2008-10-18
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