Aus Open 2009 'Battle of the Boards' pick 'em

gazzpash · Club Coach

RE: Aus Open 2009 'Battle of the Boards' pick 'em

steven · Tennis legend

I've sent today's first update to the site after 9 matches. 8 of them went the way of the most popular pick - Nole 99%, Fed 100%, Safin who certainly didn't wobble today 92%, Pics 81%, Stani 99%, Berdbrain 76% and even Robredo 75% winning in straight sets, with Cilic 74% beating Tipsy in 4 sets.

Lucky loser Amer Delic (1%) saved the 37% of us who picked Nieminen from further damage with taking out PHM (46%) 9-7 in the 5th, PHM letting go of a comfortable 2 set (6-3 6-1) lead with a stunning collapse which must result in the erstwhile deputy head GEM challenging Dammit for the flaky Frenchman of the year award!

As a result of all this, NiallE (AM) and Anthony Costantino (TN) share the lead, while only BAZ87 (IN), up 84 to 34th, is on 9/9 today. Bethan still heads the BTs in 3=, she's still a point ahead of me too.

Meanwhile, Numpty went a set down to Lu, came back to take the 2nd and is now a break down in the 3rd ...

-- Edited by steven at 06:53, 2009-01-21

Smidster · Challenger level

Come on Baghdatis!!!

A set down and just recovered the break to lead 6-5* (Against Soderling)

steven · Tennis legend

It was a double break - what's the silly Sod playing at? furious

mjd · Challenger qualifying

Why is my English flag the stars and stripes?
Is it because I watched Obama yesterday?

steven · Tennis legend

LOL no - each full update (all pages) takes about 4 mins to upload and for part of that time, the numbering of the images will be out of sync with the table. If it persists though, it may mean that your web image cache is not updating properly.

Numpty out - only 1 entrant got it right.

steven · Tennis legend

'SYNDICATED' DAY 3 REPORT

A relatively predictable day until the evening started drawing in, when it all went a bit pear-shaped, especially for a certain Numpty who can be seen second from left at http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=gh3-N4dmTPEn doing something apparently better suited to him than playing tennis (ok, maybe a bit harsh!) and for PHM, who made a bid to take over from Dammit as head GEM when he turned a 3 & 1 two-set lead into an 8-6 defeat in the 5th, while the German Gasquet, Kohli, somehow contrived to lose to Santoro in 5 sets as well!

Full results can be found at http://www.britishtennis.net/competitions.html

TEAMS

Rusedski.co.uk WR 3, up 3 to 1st, took the lead today, with AM.com WR 2 back up 1 place to 2nd and Tennis.com (in the first pick 'em where they have had a full team) rising 6 to 3rd.

Some teams seem to be doing particularly well in the bottom half of the draw and badly in the top half or vice versa. Rising 5 places each were Team CC WR 1, now 5th, and the Feddies, now 8th. Heading south were end of R1 leaders MTF, down 8 to 9th, who started their trademark post-R1 slide faster than usual, BT.net, down 5 to 12th, and TAT, who plummeted 11 places from 2nd to 13th but will probably recover some ground tomorrow.

TOP 10

Wade (IN) & tennismember (TN) both rose 32 to 1= after getting 13/16 correct today, the former picking the Santoro win, the letter the Muller win, while both got Baggy right. NiallE (AM) & Anthony Costantino (TN) were up 1 to 1= themselves early in the day, but eventually dropped 1 on the day to 3=.

Sharing 5th place now are scooter (IN), EdLavis (AM) & IconAlex (CC), all up 7, indeed, currently 5 of the top 7 are newbies. Meanwhile, Imoen (BT) drops 3 to 8th and mintsauce (AM), 40-15 (AM) & Hev (IN) all join the top 10, all up 24 to 9=.

ON THE RISE

Apart from the two leaders, three more entrants managed to score 13/16 today - Brett (IN), up 202 to 51st with all of the bottom quarter still intact, The Man from Onken (IN), up 223 to 133rd after picking Santoro, and osengur (TN), up 182 to 258th with all of the bottom quarter still intact.

Getting Baggy and Muller seems to have been the key to getting a high score today, with those who got the even bigger shocks correct (such as Esther (AM), up 76 to 42= after being the only entrant who picked Lu to beat Numpty), going a bit overboard on the number of shocks they predicted and thus dropping points on the rest of the field elsewhere in the draw. In all, 29 entrants rose more than 100 places.

DODGY DROPPERS

Getting less than half of the winners correct today guaranteed a big fall, with bruno18zg , down 254 to 259th, and mysterX (TA), down 315 to 348th, suffering the most out of those with 7/16 correct. However, the lowest score of the day was 5/16 correct from GiulioAxe (MT), who drops 262 places to 448th.

By the way, yesterday's leader shotgun (MT) dropped 22 places to 23rd with 9/16 correct.

TEAM KO

Seedings and L16 draw based on AO R1 scores, L16 matches to be decided by the 32 matches in AO R2.

(1) MensTennisForums 18.50
(16) Tennisopolis.com 20.48

(9) BBC 606 boards 20.60
(8) BritishTennis.net 19.80

(5) JamieMurray.org 20.13
(12) AndyRoddick.com 20.33

(13) LleytonHewitt.biz 20.40
(4) Rusedski.co.uk 21.00

(3) AndyMurray.com 20.53
(14) RogerFederer.com 20.94

(11) Centre Court Forum 20.60
(6) Tennis4you.com 20.63

(7) Rest of the World 20.70
(10) Tennis.com 21.56

(15) RichardGasquet.net 20.13
(2) TalkAboutTennis 19.21

No less than six of the eight teams who did worse in R1 are leading their higher-seeded opponents at the moment!

Count Zero · Tennis legend

at least SdC did the decent thing and win his 1st rd.

finally a GEM who who does what he's told (and appears to be in the form of his life as, typically, he draws boggo), even if he didn't do what he was told in the qualies

johnnylad · Tennis legend

I seem to be underperforming in these early rounds whilst keeping the vast majority of my last 16 and QF's in.

How many others tipped Cipolla to beat Tursunov?

Drew · Jan 21, 2009

Hey Im 3rd..........................................................................................(403rd)

I should stick to drawing houses !

Smidster · Challenger level

granted a fairly easy evening to predict but to go through it without losing anyone is a bit of a surprise.

Just got to hope Tsonga turns it round then we get wins for Blake, Gulbis and some Scotsman whose name escapes me.

steven · Tennis legend

Tsonga's just taken the 2nd set t/b 10-8!

Meanwhile, I feel I must share this with all of the people who were let down by Numpty yesterday (thanks, if that's the right word, to Fedex on the GR team for finding it) ... turns out he's tried the singing thing before: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=0iRFFssZ7Qo

It includes lyrics like:

- with all the cars he's won <for winning tournaments> he'll have to open a car showroom

- he was clever playing tennis else he'd now be working as a cashier in the McDonalds in Unquillo (now there's an idea, Dave ... free burgers LOL)

It then moves onto unpintable double entendres, including a gratuitously nasty one about Hewitt (also very funny but I'm not going to translate it), who was persona non grata in Argentina for a while, but it's mainly worth watching just to see Daveeeeeeeeeeeed make a complete numpty of himself again. His singing is SO bad!!

Don't worry though, it's all clean enough if you don't know any Spanish/Argentinian slang!

Smidster · Challenger level

Blake and Tsonga safely through

Andreev and Gulbis are having one hell of a match on court 2. Gulbis up 5-2 in 4th set but BP's a plenty and Andreev took a 2 set lead.

Peter too · Tennis legend

All my choices seem to end up in a fifth set and then crumble. cry

In the words of Eliza Doolittle "CMON IGOR move your bloomin' ***"

jamatthews · Strong Club Player

A couple of days ago when everyone was bitching about Hewitt I couldn't remember whether I picked him to beat Gonzalez or not. Having checked my picks today I've realised that I picked him to reach the semis. biggrin