Hewitt :)

Cmon Victor and Radek do me proud !

... and now he's remembered again and lost the next 5 points.

-- Edited by steven on Thursday 25th of June 2009 08:11:38 PM

bt.net seems to be down for me ?

Anyone else got access to the stats page or comp pages ?

WIMBLEDON BOTB - DAY 4 'SYNDICATED' REPORT

Lleyton Hewitt, picked by 24%, won the most important match of the day from a BOTB point of view (and possibly of the tournament unless he goes out in the next round) against no. 5 seed Potty.

Today's results have set up some crunch matches in R3, e.g. Count Duckula (52%) v Pics Ferrer (46%) and the Undertaker (60%) v Berdbrain (31%), though in both cases the minority picks have looked more impressive so far.

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

TEAMS

AM.com managed to finish the day where they started it, at the top of the league, despite swapping places with the Feddies a couple of times. Behind them, JM.org, up 1 to 3rd, and Team CC, up 1 to 4th, both gained at the expense of BBC 606, down 2 to 5th - they and Tennisopolis, down 2 to 9th, were the only teams to fall more than one place.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the biggest gainers of the day and the winners of R2 were the Hewitts, up 3 to 6th.

TOP 12

With Racy the ATP Race bot dropping back a bit, Jessie181 (TA) has managed to finish the day in the lead for the third day in a row (unprecedented at this early stage of a BOTB, I think), just a point ahead of BOTB debutants cheddarwurst (IN) & srberg (TA), who share 2nd place. All three of them got 13/17 correct on Thursday and 26/32 for R2 as a whole.

The two fastest risers into the top 10, sharpie (GR), up 13 to 4th, and former world no. 1 (now ranked 218) Linda (AM), up 33 to 6th, managed to go one better, with 14/17 on day 4 and two of the three equal best scores for R2 as a whole (27/32 correct), while sandwiched between those two is MJD (BT), up 3 to 5th, who managed to catch up the leader's points total at one stage before dropping back slightly.

Three points behind the leader, andys_ipod (AM) & Roy (GR) both dropped 5 to 7= after getting 12/17 correct, while MICHAEL (JM), eddie (AM), mugzzer (BB) & brodyluv (TN) all got 13/17 and climbed 8 to 9=.

ON THE RISE

The third entrant who scored 27/32 for R2 was Borovnia (TY), up 93 to 39th. Along with him and the other two joint R2 winners (see above), three more entrants scored 14/17 on Thursday - Nick (LH), up 82 to 34=, Carol (AM), up 105 to 43=, and David Thompson (AM), up 124 to 66=.

However, the two entrants who started in the bottom half of the table and got 13/17 correct moved up even more - timmadigan (CC) climbing 128 to 202nd and RobH (BT), up 127 to 228th - the former got 12 more points in R2 than in R1, which may be a record!

DODGY DROPPERS

There are five entrants at the bottom of the table who are having a nightmare of a tournament, each at least 7 points adrift of the remaining 443 entrants after just two rounds. Getting just 3/17 correct today and 10/32 for R2 as a whole has left world no. 864 Donna Hammond (TN) (aka Christoph Palmanshofer on the ATP twin basis) as the 'lanterne rouge' and allowed agustin (SG), up 1 to 447th, to climb off the bottom at last.

As usual, in order to find the fastest dropper of the day you have to go further up the table to find players who had more room to fall. With 8/17 correct, streetbond (MT), down 175 to 329=, was the entrant most in need of a parachute on day 4, though quite a few others also fell over 100 places.

OUTLOOK

The top 10 have between 12-15 R3 winners still standing but only two entrants have all of their R3 winners still alive at the end of R2 - they are Jtdrum10 (TA), despite falling 7 to 24= on Thursday, and Fitz (JM), despite being down in 287= at the moment.

The most crucial match on Friday is probably Haas, picked by 63%, against Cilic, picked by 34%.

TEAM KO

Only one of the R1 top 8 (T4Y) lost to one of the R1 bottom 8 (no. 1 ranked team and defending Wimbledon team KO champions Rusedski.co.uk), with the full results as follows:

(1) RogerFederer.com 46.74 beat (16) MensTennisForums 41.81
(8) LleytonHewitt.biz 47.67 beat (9) TalkAboutTennis 44.49

(5) JamieMurray.org 47.23 beat (12) Other Boards 42.80
(4) AndyMurray.com 46.83 beat (13) BritishTennis.net 43.67

(3) BBC 606 boards 45.33 beat (14) RichardGasquet.net 44.20
(6) Centre Court Forum 46.13 beat (11) Tennisopolis.com 45.54

(10) Rusedski.co.uk 46.00 beat (7) Tennis4you.com 44.40
(2) AndyRoddick.com 44.42 beat (15) GBTennisGirls.com 41.75

The winners are paired for the QFs in the order shown above (yes, there's going to be a fratricidal battle in the 2nd quarter!) and the losers are similarly paired in the 9-16 place QFs.

RANT OF THE DAY

I don't often talk about my own day in the daily report, but today was so typical of the transient highs and lows of BOTB that I think I will.

It was another high-scoring day for most of us, but yet again a good start (for me at least - 12/12 live matches correct) was derailed in the evening as two players who messed me around in R1 by winning when I wanted them to lose contrived to lose when I needed them to win in order to hold onto my gains from earlier in the day. I can just about forgive Santoro, who knocked out my pick Kiefer in R1 and then lost from a set up against Santoro, but the name Daniel Gimeno-Traver may give me nightmares ...

DGT beat my R2 winner pick Taylor Dent in R1, so I needed him to beat 51% pick Tricky Vicky in R2 to limit the damage. So there I was avidly following what without BOTB would have been one of the least likely matches for me to follow in the whole draw in which I hadn't even picked either player as a winner, i.e. DGT v Troicki, and feeling more nervous than I had done when Muzza was playing earlier!

The BBC live text states: "As the Aussie TV commentator says, 'Gimeno-Traver's had a brain explosion.' Only those of us who were here will ever truly understand the magnitude of the Troicki-Gimeno-Traver epic." I can believe that, because he was a set up, got bagelled in the next, then 2 sets to 1 up, then a break up in the 5th, lost it, then 3 bps up to go *5-4 in the 5th before losing the next 5 points! Troicki then demanded that they go off due to the bad light but was refused, so instead DGT kindly handed the Serb 3 bps and (a game later) the match. And DGT can't even say he's French as an excuse!

I can only think that every time he got ahead, he remembered that if he beat Troicki, he probably wouldn't be able to dine out on his "I've got a winning H2H against Andy Murray" story (4 & 3 in the Vic Future, May 2005) after the weekend and decided he'd better choke it again! Grrrrrrrrrrr!

MORE QUOTES

tlimvvo2max (CC) "There's a huge, blundering Argentinian buffoon-shaped hole almost all the way through my predictions now."

Nevets (CC) "Who needs Nalbandian to *** up your predictions when you have Del Potro in action?!"

Doesn't BOTB just get you. Just when I was composing my "I'm never playing this damn thing ever again" flounce message, having dropped 140 places for what appeared to by no reason whatsover (although in reality might have been because I have a totally irrationla dislike of Troiki and never pick him ..... ), then suddenly the clouds clear again.

Having mistakenly thought I had Potty thru to the quarters, I suddenly found out I had him out in the next round. Add to that Big Evo finally coming good ( Standard back against the King GEM, Tsonga policy ) and suddenly I'm max points so far for this round and I've got all my last 8 still standing.

I've saved my founce mail as a draft though. I'll be completely down in the dumps again by 9pm tonight once Cilic has blown a 2 set lead and bottled or something ....

"Rock on Tommy!"

At least I dont lose those points tonight

What a match! - 7-5 7-5 1-6 6-7 6-6 > to be resumed.