Week 32 Challenger - Brasilia-2 ($35k+H) - Brazil - hard

murray_2k9 · Challenger qualifying

Week 32 Challenger - Brasilia-2 ($35k+H) - Brazil - hard

iainemm · Social player

Yehh i know butt
Were you expecting 3 loses.
And thats them all dopped poitns Goodall dropped 76 points?
I for one was expecting at least 2 victories there

wolf · Tennis legend

Josh and Boggo can't help it if they were injured.

Wardy's loss is pretty dire though.

johnnylad · Tennis legend

I posted what I did earlier to try and avoid people calling James's loss dire and poor.

The guy regularly wins futures titles on this continent. He's no mug. And he qualified for this tournament. He's in the groove on the surface and in the conditions.

I'm as gutted as the next fan though

Count Zero · Tennis legend

this is a shame. lets hope its nothing too serious for Josh.

a shame for Wardy. i think perhaps though that these South American events despite looking weaker on paper are not as easy as they would seem to be. none of us really know what conditions the players have to put up with so there may be huge advantage to 'locals' who are more comfortable with the set up.

ForeverDelayed · Grand Slam Champion

johnnylad wrote:

I posted what I did earlier to try and avoid people calling James's loss dire and poor.

The guy regularly wins futures titles on this continent. He's no mug. And he qualified for this tournament. He's in the groove on the surface and in the conditions.

I'm as gutted as the next fan though

He actually lost in the final qualifying round, but the point is still there.

Bonatto had the advantage of knowing the conditions and perhaps having some favourable home line calls, but his record isn't overly impressive and his best results this season have come on a clay court and he hasn't shown too much on a hard court that suggests he should be a threat on it.

It's a match that Ward should have won if he is going to progress up the rankings, as despite all the advantages Bonatto would have had, you would hope to beat a clay court specialist whose never made the top 300 on a hard court if you are just outside the top 200. (even if Ward's record on hard courts this year is poor)

Hopefully Josh's injury isn't too bad and he'll be fit in time for the US Open, but this tour of South America just hasn't worked for our players at all.

The Knight · Challenger qualifying

James has to stop this. He is a claycourter, he should play on clay. He can learn how to play on hardcourts later, for now he should focus on moving up the rankings

seagull · Hall of fame

Amazing that every time Wardy needs a win to make the Top 200 he blows it!

Count Zero · Tennis legend

lol, maybe he is thinking about it too much?

MAC · Junior player

Everyone seems to have forgotten that Ward had to pull out of the first south america challenger onlt a fortnight ago with a fever/illness. If he was on antibiotics that will also have affected his fitness and conditioning - give the guy a break - he's at his career high and has been competing in hard court challengers as preparation for his first US Open qualies. After that he is in fact going back to european challengers on clay. While the last few weeks have been disappointing, it all looks pretty much in line with Ward's career master plan to me.

steven · Tennis legend

That's fair enough. I think we all saw chances for 2 or even 3 Challenger R1 wins yesterday and it was a big shock when they all turned into losses.

Jeff Stelling · Club Coach

iainemm wrote:

With Boggo also losing this is just turning out to be Emmbarassing for british tennis. At this rate we will have no players in qualies for US Open.
Marcel Felder (URU) d. (7) Joshua Goodall (GBR) 6/4 2/0 ret.
(LL) Alexandre Bonatto (BRA) d. James Ward (GBR) 6/3 7/6(2)

Well Fukin Done Boggo, Goodall, Ward

No need for that tone, a little out of order.

Goodall simply isn't that good. He's clearly already reached his career high ranking earlier this year, and it isn't worth emotionally 'feeling' his various peaks and troughs too much. He's never going to beat top 200 players with the consistency of a Bogdanovic, for example.

Ward is a little different as I would like to think he has yet to peak on the rankings, however his career results thus far would suggest that ever reaching the top 150 would be a major achievement for him. He simply lacks the quality to consistently win matches that he should do, so it's very unfair to have a go at him for this (in my eyes).

Bogdanovic, I grant you is disappointing as it is widely recognised that if he put together 12 months of his best tennis then he would be top 100. However his current injury plight is widely documented, and Levy is no mug either.

So you might have expected 2 or 3 wins, but to slate the players in this manner is unacceptable. Word is that Ward and Goodalll work their socks off in training, and if they ever come up short it is through lack of talent rather than application. And that is pretty much all you can ask.

-- Edited by Jeff Stelling on Wednesday 12th of August 2009 12:26:54 PM

Count Zero · Tennis legend

are you THE Jeff Stelling? can you give Boggo a shout out on Soccer Saturday? Maybe when the Barnsley player of the same name score :)

on a serious note i was watching a bit of Nole v Polansky yesterday and once again it showed that the level that these guys ranked 200-300 play at is extraordinarily high. ok maybe Nole wasn't at his best after a long lay off. but Peter seriously pushed him. i think if you are playing matches at challenger lvl and something is not quite right then you will lose pretty quick. i was amazed that boggo won as many matches as he did recently, although he wasn't able to get past any of the higher ranked guys so maybe he just had some luck of the draw.