Holidays now sorted out (there turned out to be only one week of the summer that fitted in with everything else, so it wasn't a hard decision in the end!) so I can announce that we will be doing a pick 'em for the Montréal Masters this year instead of Cincy.
Main draw takes place: Friday 7 August 19.00 GMT / 8 pm UK / 3 pm US EDT
Entries will open: Friday 7 August approx. 21.00 GMT / 10 pm UK / 5 pm US EDT
Qualifiers placed in the draw: Sunday 9 August mid-evening UK / late afternoon US
Entries close: Monday 10 August 15.00 GMT / 4 pm UK / 9 pm US EDT (possibly slightly earlier if play on the outside courts starts before play on Centre)
More information will appear here nearer the time.
I will be away for just over a week from the final weekend of Montréal and while Bethan should be able to post the Montréal BOTB results during that weekend, the post-Montréal rankings will be delayed until after I get back. However, they will be produced before USO entries open on Friday 28 August.
Preview
Cincy is usually one of the toughest tournaments of the year to pick, so many of you will be happy to have found out that we are going for the Canada Masters this year. That is, until you realise that it's out of the frying pan into the fire, since it'll be:
- Rafa's first tournament back from injury - Duckboy's first tournament back from injury (possibly) - the return of Dammit Gasquet after suspension to add the GEM factor - probably Muzza and Nole's first tournament for 5 weeks
Plus Fed is rumoured to be likely to be on 'paternity' leave - hopefully he'll confirm or deny this before entries open!
Could be interesting, then ... or very, very annoying, but then we need an annoying pick 'em after the relative calm of a Numpty and Dammit-free Wimbledon, when people just weren't getting frustrated enough to provide enough top quality quotes!
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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!
Montréal is still a couple of weeks away, but I've set up a BOTB account on twitter at http://twitter.com/botb1 (note the "1" - someone had already nabbed botb) with the intention of posting short updates when I haven't got time to go around all the boards or when emails are likely to be delayed, e.g.
"entries now open" "qualifiers now placed" "just found about about last minute w/d - Dammit (nose injury)" "full results still some time away, but picks now up and X is in the lead" (during the quiet period early in R1 when I'm trying to get the results pages set up) "results now posted on site up to and including the Fed match"
etc
This isn't intended to replace chat about the competition on individual forums, but it is designed to give up to date info to anyone on any of the boards who's really keen to keep up with it all, especially people on the boards that don't get the 'syndicated' updates, like RF.com (where they get zapped), MTF (where nobody can be bothered, but there may be a few who'd like to feel a bit more involved), etc.
Anyway, I'll try it for Montréal and see if people like it, so if you want to follow it, http://twitter.com/botb1 is the place to go.
Avatar needed
If anyone can come up with a good avatar for the BOTB twitter, I'd be very grateful! Unless you like the current one that is - Andy's either very happy or very angry in it, which seems very appropriate to BOTB! (he's actually very happy, I took it just after he'd won a big point against Duckboy)
-- Edited by steven on Sunday 26th of July 2009 09:04:36 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!
Background needed too if anyone's feeling creative.
Edit: found one of the pics I took at Wimby with Muzza and a linesman apparently watching and looking a bit shocked - you could imagine they're watching a GEM choke again.
-- Edited by steven on Sunday 26th of July 2009 10:02:15 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!
Qualifiers will be placed by the end of Sunday UK time.
Entries will close at 15.00 GMT = 11 am US Eastern on MONDAY. This is 4 pm UK time / 17.00 CET.
BOTB is now on twitter - as an experiment, we'll be using it to post short items that people need to know about quickly, e.g. when the draw with qualifiers placed is available, any late withdrawals we happen to find out about, some quick updates on day 1 before all the results pages are ready, announcements that we need to get back to teams quickly and so on, though there won't be more than a handful of posts each day. Feel free to follow us at http://twitter.com/botb1 and you'll probably be one of the first to know what's going on!
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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!
I've gone for Djokovic to take the title, as I've just got a feeling that he is due a big title (plus with Nadal got 100% fit, Federer looking after his twins etc, it's the kind of event that Djokovic has been winning)