That's certainly not a bad R1 draw for either of them.

One of the forums was asking the question "Who's the highest -ranked player you've never heard of?" recently, and when I scanned the list, Sugita was my answer, so I'm not surprised to find out that he's never played a Brit in singles before. He won Japan F7 earlier this month then headed off to Aptos where he qualified then beat Groth before going down 2 & 3 to, coincidentally, the Gooch.

Boggo's big incentive for getting through is to try to gain sweet revenge for a defeat at the AELTC for the second week in a row - it was the Gooch who knocked him out a couple of years ago on a raucous Court 18, with the cheering led by the most annoyng Aussie voice I've ever heard ... and that's saying something!

Cox is 17 and the world junior no. 36, having reached the Wimbledon Junior Final earlier this month. Evo is a much better player though.

-- Edited by steven on Saturday 18th of July 2009 10:54:55 PM

Good draws for the pair of them, although it will questionable if Boggo does play here. It's a shame if he is too injured to play here as he would have a decent chance of some points as no-one in his section is in great form at the moment (Guccione has reached the semi's this week, but he surely won't put two weeks together after his form in 2009)

Cox is a decent prospect, but it won't be good if Evans manages to lose to him and he should be delighted with the draw he's got. Yes, the top seed is in round two, but if you're unseeded, you can't be too picky with the draw and getting a wild card is a good draw.

Unfortunately the world number 259 Giancarlo Petrazzuolo was the first name on the rankings who I didn't recognise from anywhere, but he's a 28 year old who has never made the top 250 and his best effort pointswise this year in round two of Roland Garros qualies, so we haven't come across him too often. (I must have not been paying attention the week he reached a challenger final at the end of 2008)

(Steven... not knowing Sugita... you're knowledge of the Asian futures tour obviously needs some work then :))

Salmon wrote:

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They're updating the scores on Twitter this year, haha.

http://twitter.com/53tennis

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To be honest, for an event that cannot afford a live score or a live stream, it's a pretty good way of doing things. All you need is someone to type the scores every few minutes and you have a semi-live score service.

Now if only the LTA could have done that for the Manchester event this week. Now, given that we know they had someone there on twitter to update when Boggo retired, surely they could have done that....

 

Yes, using Twitter to post scores is a great idea. The important thing is to realise that tennis fans are out there and interested in the results, I don't really care how they do it. Perhaps for Challengers, in the medium term you'd hope for proper live scoring like some of them do have, but for Futures and Challengers that can't manage proper live scoring yet, something like Twitter updates or a webcam fixed on the scoreboard are miles better than nothing.

Salmon wrote:

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 I'm surprised that you've forgotten Sugita! Remember the longest winning streak thread you started? I used to post updates every now and then and Sugita finally broke into the top 10.

http://britishtennis.activeboard.com/forum.spark?forumID=61841&p=3&topicID=15797495&page=2&sort=oldestFirst

Yuichi hasn't played a Brit in Futures, but I remember him beating Dan C by 2 and 3 in the Osaka Mayor's Cup in 2006.

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Thanks for reminding me about that thread - since the advent of the the Brit-bashing/Brit-bashed streaks thread I seem to have completely forgotten about that one, I wonder if it needs any updates. I don't follow the junior results nearly as closely as the men's results (even less so before I started doing the junior successes page at DJ's request), so I'm not too surprised that match hadn't registered.


ForeverDelayed wrote:

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Unfortunately the world number 259 Giancarlo Petrazzuolo was the first name on the rankings who I didn't recognise from anywhere, but he's a 28 year old who has never made the top 250 and his best effort pointswise this year in round two of Roland Garros qualies, so we haven't come across him too often. (I must have not been paying attention the week he reached a challenger final at the end of 2008)

(Steven... not knowing Sugita... you're knowledge of the Asian futures tour obviously needs some work then :))

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LOL obviously it does! I only tend to pay any attention to players I need to know about for pick 'em purposes and events with British interest in them though and unless I get Greg Sharko's job at the ATP one day (joke! ), that's more than enough to be going on with!

I'd heard of Petrazzuolo but I can't remember why and ITF's having one of its Saturday night go-slows so I can't check easily - didn't he play 'death by' in Wimbledon qualies this year? (I still notice Machado in draws with Brits in them, which is funny given the direct link between him and the thread I'd totally forgotten!)

-- Edited by steven on Saturday 18th of July 2009 11:13:40 PM

Isn't Graeme Dyce at the University of Kentucky, why isn't he playing qualies here?

Doh... by UK I mean United Kingdom. That wasn't intentionally there to cause confusion.