Cool! Now he'll get a few wild cards outside Britain, I hope.


Calling him the best 18 y.o. is probably wrong. But he's definitely one of them.

Tomic is 385, so about 60 places below Evo, but of course he's also more than 2 years younger.

Typo: typed 3, meant 2

-- Edited by steven on Monday 27th of April 2009 02:43:45 PM

Tomic is not more than 3 years younger than Evo.



I am not saying that he isn't the highest ranked 1990 born player!!! It's just that the outright "best" tag is somewhat wrong.

Not a dig at Dan,but is that an unusually low ranked top under 19?

This time next year Dimitrov and Tomic should both be higher.

steven wrote:

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If you compare with Rafa (top 5 before his 19th birthday), Fed (top 40), Muzza (top 50) and Nole (top 70), then yes, and the fact that Tomic is so close when he's over 3 years younger says a lot too. It does suggest that Evo has got top 100 or better potential though, even if not top 10.

Having said that, Greg was only just inside the top 150 on his 19th birthday and Tigger didn't break the top 500 until 4 weeks after he turned 19!

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Thanks for the reply,Steven.

(as with your post, age on 19th birthday)
I was surprised as I knew roughly what Dan's ranking was, that he was the top under 19.It seemed like Nishikori(63), Gulbis(88 but 47 within a month) & Del Potro(50) were also further along by 19.It musty be fairly unusual not to have a sub19 year old in the top 200.

I don't think enough is made in general of how unusual Tim's progress was.Even when compared to another famous late bloomer like Davydenko(370).Slower star and probably will end up with a better career.To get as near the top of the game and reach so many GS semis from such a slow start as Tim did must be nearly unique.

Do you buy the argument that British players tend to be late bloomers.It seems to me just a hopeful assertion but if anyone has evidence either way here's the place to ask.

 

DavidC wrote:

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It is very unusual not to have an under 19 in the top 300. Two sites which may be of interest to those following this are Stevegtennis.com, which has ranking info on selected 'young guns' going back over several years (giving you the progression of players mentioned above such as Gulbis, Del Potro and Nishikori) , and MTF (Mens Tennis Forums), familiar to most on here, which tracks current juniors in one of its juniors threads.

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Thanks I did have a quick look on steveg and didn't see anything other than the one for this year.MTF didn't occur to me I'll check there as well as looking properly at steveg.

 

Yes, Boggo rose from 722 to 459 in 2002. That's quite a list of players he had in 2002: (with ages at the time)

Ancic, Mario 18
Bogdanovic, Alex 18
Bogomolov, Alex 19
Coene, Dominique 20
Gasquet, Richard 16
Johansson, Joachim 20
Monaco, Juan 18
Muller, Gilles 19
Nadal-Parera, Rafael 16
Reid, Todd 18
Soderling, Robin 18
Tipsarevic, Janko 18
Tsonga, Jo-Wilfried 17
Wang, Yeu-Tzuoo 17

A couple have disappeared without trace, but it's interesting that Dammit Gasquet rose from 1309 to 161 that year, whereas Mr Nadal-Parera 'only' rose from 811 to 200 ...

The following year, Boggo was the biggest rise in steveg's tier I, up from 459 to 278, though he started out lower than most ofthem. He was still ahead of Tsonga (up from 500 to 384) at that stage (was that before Tsonga discovered GB Futures and Challengers? LOL) and Andy's opponent today, Juan Monaco, who went from 470 to 324. Rafa overtook Dammit that year, ending it at 49 to the Frenchman's 93.

-- Edited by steven on Tuesday 28th of April 2009 02:21:32 PM