James Ward and Dan Evans are attempting to qualify here and are both in the same quarter.
Evo kicks off his campaign against 5th seed WR 142 Stephane Bohli whilst Ward starts off against WR 192 Yuri Schukin with 3rd seed Josellin Ouanna likely to meet in the next round.
Pretty hard draws for our guys in a strong qualifying group for a 250 so best of luck to them!
With regards to how their opponents have done this year
Schukin has played two tournaments in Kazan and Heilbronn, he managed to qualify for Heilbronn with the highest player he beat being Janowicz and then lost to K.Beck 6-2, 6-2 in the 1st round. He managed to reach quarters in Kazan by beating the WR 436 and 321 before getting beat by Kamke(WR220) 6-1, 6-4. I reckon this one is winnable for ward.
Bohli never went to AOQ despite being ranked high enough, he too has only played two tournaments. He got beat in the 1st rounf of qualifying in Zagreb by Swede, Vinciguerra(WR242) 6-7,5-7 and also played Heilbronn where he beat Wildcard Louk Sorensen in straights before falling to Kukushkin in straights, i feel this one will be too much for EVO.
Ward is 6th on Court 1, whilst EVO is 7th on Court 1. Play starts at 9am in Marseille meaning 8 o'clock our time. No idea what time round about we'll be seeing Wardy on court
Hopefully one of them will qualify from here but it's a pretty tough qualifying draw on the whole, so a good test for them, and a decent run here may secure the Davis Cup spot.
Think Ward has a better chance of getting through round one, but not expecting too much from either of them this week.
The Niland match (the one before Wardy's) is just approaching the end of the 1st set. The Ukrainian DC team who embarrassed us are having a good day here - Marchenko (now in the top 100!), Bubka & Sergeyev all safely through.
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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!