Week 48 - Futures F2 ($10,000) - Santo Domingo, Dom. Rep. (hard)

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

Week 48 - Futures F2 ($10,000) - Santo Domingo, Dom. Rep. (hard)

Smidster · Challenger level

Good to see A-Ward back...lets hope he has got over the injury

johnnylad · Tennis legend

Any indications if Jamie Baker has made this trip?

It seems weird he would play once more this season and that it would be in the Dominican Republic.

Unless he's spending the off season in America I suppose...

steven · Tennis legend

Well he hadn't withdrawn by Friday, so I'd say there's a good chance he's playing. Perhaps he's going to see how far he can get then head up north to Punta Cana for the beaches ...

steven · Tennis legend

QR1: Joe Cooper UNR lost to (WC) Carlos Antonio Távarez Rodríguez (DOM) UNR by 3-6 6-1 7-6(2) cry

QR1: (q10) Alex Ward WR 988 beat Raúl-Isaias Rosas Zarur (MEX) WR 1908 by 2 & 2 smile

QR2: (q10) Alex Ward WR 988 v (WC) Carlos Antonio Távarez Rodríguez (DOM) UNR

Nice convincing win for the Wardinator ... and it was so nearly an all-GB match in QR2!

johnnylad · Tennis legend

To reach the main draw he'll have to beat Cedrik-Marcel Stebe who's a top 10 junior and more than likely rising up the men's rankings tree a little more consistently.

We can but hope the Wardinator has something up his sleeve for him

steven · Tennis legend

He didn't get as far as testing himself against Stebe, I'm afraid:

QR2: (q10) Alex Ward WR 988 beat (WC) Carlos Antonio Távarez Rodríguez (DOM) UNR by 1 & 2

FQR: (q10) Alex Ward WR 988 lost to (q7) Cedrik-Marcel Stebe (GER) WR 944 by 3 & 3 cry

But Jamie B is back in action here it seems (though he'll be out of the top 400 tomorrow), and with a nice draw to start off with. smile

L32: (3) Jamie Baker WR 360 v Roberto Maytin (VEN) WR 728

Winner to play Q or WC in R2. smile

-- Edited by steven at 04:28, 2008-11-25

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

RE: Week 48 - Futures F2 (10K) - Santo Domingo, Dom. Rep. (hard)

wolf · Tennis legend

You are right Stircrazy, that is what is on the ITF site as well.

Thank god for that, I really had thought The Wardinator had lost it with that result. He still has got nowhere near the heights of that run to a final earlier in the year, I didn't expect him to keep doing that of course, but steady progress would have been nice. He's only scored two points since and one of those was the week after.

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

steven wrote:

Jamie B is back in action here it seems (though he'll be out of the top 400 tomorrow), and with a nice draw to start off with.

L32: (3) Jamie Baker WR 360 v Roberto Maytin (VEN) WR 728

Winner to play Q or WC in R2.

The R2 opposition, assuming he beats Maytin (

), is either the Portuguese qualifier, Pedro Sousa, WR 1115, the unranked Puerto Rican WC, Alex Llompart.

steven · Tennis legend

Stircrazy wrote:

steven wrote:

He didn't get as far as testing himself against Stebe, I'm afraid:

QR2: (q10) Alex Ward WR 988 lost to (WC) Carlos Antonio Távarez Rodríguez (DOM) UNR by 6-4 4-6 6-4
Are you sure, Steven? According to the ATP site, Alex beat Távarez by 1 & 2, only to lose to Stebe, the q7, by 3 & 3!

That's very weird - it must have said that he lost in QR2 on one of the sites at the time I checked (I'm pretty sure it was the ATP draw where it said that) and it must have said that score too, because I wouldn't have made it up LOL - it wasn't the score for one of the matches close to it in the draw either, which might have suggested I picked up the wrong result, so this is all a bit of a mystery.

Anyway, the most important thing is that he didn't bomb out quite as spectacularly as it looked like he had.

steven · Tennis legend

steveg has it too:

"Singles - Second Round #UNR (WC)Carlos Antonio Tavarez-Rodriguez (DOM) d. #UNR (10)Alexander Ward (GBR) 6-4 4-6 6-4" (the UNR is because steveg still has this week's original ATP rankings which Alex was missing from)

So it wasn't just the rankings the ATP stuffed up on Monday (and, thankfully, I hadn't completely lost it LOL)

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

steven wrote:

Jamie B is back in action here it seems (though he'll be out of the top 400 tomorrow), and with a nice draw to start off with.

L32: (3) Jamie Baker WR 360 v Roberto Maytin (VEN) WR 728

Winner to play Q or WC in R2.

Bit of good news elsewhere in Jamie's quarter of the draw: overnight, the Russian, Andrey Kumantsov (WR 708), very obligingly removed his compatriot & the sixth seed, Valery Rudnev (WR 466), by 4 & 4! biggrin

johnnylad · Tennis legend

I'm never sure how "good" this kind of news is.

Sometimes its great as the draw has opened up but at other times it means the Brit has everything to lose against an unknown quantity rather than a chance to pit themselves against a seed etc...

What do people think?

Are there any intersting stats on this kind of thing Steven?

Hopefully it won't matter in this case because a fit Jamie Baker should have enough for both of those players!

steven · Tennis legend

There probably are, but I don't know where to get hold of them easily. Obviously if the winner is a 'ringer' like Machado in Portugal earlier this year, i.e. a very under-ranked up- and-coming player, then it's a bad thing, but if the reason for the upset is either that the seed was having an off-day or it was the lower-ranked player's "final" and their level drops the next day (which happens quite a lot, from memory) then it's a good thing.

Maybe I'll start keeping a tally of the times this happens - of course, we'd need to compare the win % in situations like this with the win % against seeds and there are all kinds of factors which might make it difficult to come to a firm conclusion even if we had a lot of data, so maybe looking only at matches where the Brit was due to face a (higher-ranked) seed and ended up facing a lower-ranked player who beat the seed and seeing if the Brits win more than half of those matches would be the way to do it.