Rice obviously hasn't recovered from whatever caused him to retire last week. Mr. Sluiter not blessing us with an appearance either unless he has been given a main draw wild card.
Bad light stopped play here (tomorrow's OoP says "revised due to darkness"!), but we couldn't have asked for much more from day 1, with all five Brits winning (they were all expected to, but even so) and two of them finishing matches when their potential QR2 opponents didn't:
QR1 S1: (q14) Dan Cox WR 805 beat Andrei Vasilevski (BLR) WR 1291 by 4 & 5 QR1 S2: Alexander Ward WR 869 beat Ergun Zorlu (TUR) WR 1352 by 3 & 1 QR1 S3: Neil Pauffley WR 1372 beat Robert Raguz (CRO) WR 1510 by 4 & 4 QR1 S5: (q5) Matt Illingworth WR 695 beat Erkin Aliyev (AZE) UNR by 1 & 3 QR1 S7: (q7) Josh Milton WR 717 beat (WC) Serkan-Akin Dilek (TUR) UNR by 1 & 1 QR1 S7: Dan Smethurst WR 1074 v Emilio Rodriguez-Navarro (ESP) WR 1521 - Sunday QR1 S8: Marcus Willis WR 948 v Ivan Bjelica (SRB) WR 884 - Sunday
QR2 S1: (q14) Dan Cox WR 805 v Matthias Kolbe (GER) WR 1428 QR2 S2: Alexander Ward WR 869 v (q2) Dmytro Petrov (UKR) WR 617 QR2 S3: Neil Pauffley WR 1372 v (q3) Joao Sousa (POR) WR 640 QR2 S5: (q5) Matt Illingworth WR 695 v Ricardo Siggia (BRA) WR 892 or Gancalo Falcao (POR) WR 1296 QR2 S7: (q7) Josh Milton WR 717 v Riccardo Maiga (SUI) UNR or Nikolai Soloviev (RUS) WR 1724
-- Edited by steven on Saturday 4th of April 2009 08:28:00 PM
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GB on a shirt, Davis Cup still gleaming, 79 years of hurt, never stopped us dreaming ... 29/11/2015 that dream came true!
To continue Vandenburg optimistic posting, I though I would predict a record winning streak for evo, but looking at Steven's thread he would need to win both futures in Turkey and win his next match just to equal his steak from last year!
Anyway, if he does that well in Turkey I guess they could be his last 10k futures of his career!
apparently the heat is unreal out there....combine that with seriously slow clay and it's gonna be tough for our guys.....great effort from Willis !!!
it should suit the likes of illingworth and milton pretty well, probably not so much shot-makers like Pauffley and Smethurst.
Evo's probably the class act in the field but with the conditions I wouldn't make him a shoe-in for the title by any means as there will be some serious spanish and italian grinders out there who will be very tough