Entries for Miami BOTB are now open at http://www.freewebs.com/britishtennis/Competitions.html

Qualifiers will be placed in about 24 hours from now if you want to wait for that.

Entries will close at 14.00 GMT (2 pm UK / 10 am US EDT) on Wednesday.

Good luck!

I went for it in my usual 2 minutes for the whole form style!

Thank you to my GEM friends ( Gicquel & Gasquet ) for slightly mucking up an otherwise quite encouraging start.  One day I'll maybe learn !

One hour later, and the GEM falls. 6-3 7-6 to Marchenko, straight sets victory. What massive progress from precisely one year ago up in Glasgow. Oleksandr Dolgopolov Jr isn't the only Ukrainian to progress at a blistering pace the past 12 months and crack into the top 100. Currently 85 in the world now, and that's a guaranteed 25 ranking points even taking a loss in the second round, which should push Marchenko up to... Steven should know this one, he's good with the stats.

Ah, yes, I forgot the qualies points... I've had late nights for the past week and I'm starting to get very drowsy despite my attempts to stay up for the Blake-Krajinovic match. I don't have much hope that the outcome will go the same way as the previous one, but you never know, Blake could do one of his famous flakes. It'd have to be pretty flaky to lose to his opponent though.

Ironically, despite the fact that I forgot the qualies points, my own estimation was "about 10 places".

EDIT: Speaking of flaking... Blake gets to 4-1, takes his foot off the gas to make it 4-2, then fluffs it on his own serve and gets broken by the just-turned-18-year-old to 4-3, leaving Fica to serve and get it all back level again. Scoreline now at 4-4.

And Blake gets to 40-0 and then fluffs it again to deuce, secures the game eventually though. Yikes, the match stats are making for interesting reading. Blake's first serve percentage right now is HALF of what Krajinovic's is, at only 32%.

And at this late stage, we're now in a tiebreak to decide the first set. Krajinovic could actually snatch this. According to the stats on points won, the Serb's actually ahead at 51% to Blake's 49%. Not that I can see what's going on of course, since none of this is televised until the second round, but could Blake possibly be flaking? Against this sort of opponent, you'd think Blake would be stamping his authority on the match. Just as I typed that, Blake lost serve and Krajinovic gets the mini-break. 5-2 in the tiebreak to the Serb. And now, set point.

Well, Filip Krajinovic has just taken the first set on the tiebreaker, 7-6 [8]. Took it with an ace, so Live Scores is telling me.

Will Blake continue to flake or will he pull it back? I'd love to stay and continue following this... but it's getting very difficult to stay awake now. Note - if Blake loses this, it will do havoc to my Pick'em. At least I may have the compensation of being pleased about the result in that event, but my Pick'em will take a hit.

The Serb holds in the first game of the second set. A reasonable start. 2-2 still on serve. 3-2 and still on serve. Goodness knows how I'm staying awake at this point. If this goes to a third set I am definitely going to sleep. 4-3, Fica held on after having several break points against him. I wonder if this goes all the way to another tiebreak? Alright, I'm done now, I'm off to get some sleep.

-- Edited by LadyTigress on Thursday 25th of March 2010 12:33:13 AM

MIAMI MASTERS BOTB - DAY 1 'SYNDICATED' REPORT

Many thanks to all those who entered this competition - 231 entrants is more than we had for either of the last two Masters pick 'ems and while it is 10% less than Miami last year, the main boards are generally up and it is only really those most likely not to have found out about the BT.net URL problem unless they had elected to be on the mailing list, e.g. RF.com (where the mods tend to zap anything about external contests) and individual entrants, that have seen significant drops.

DAY 1

There were a lot of hard to pick matches in R1 (e.g. two in-form players facing each other or two out-of-form players facing each other) but apart from 65% pick Golubev's loss to DGT, the only matches that went against the majority picks were those involving GEMs, with Dammit (90%), PHM (83%) and Gicquel (77%) all losing when most of us expected them to win, the latter adding to the long list of garlic-eating malingerers who have retired in R1 during a pick 'em (le Monf having added to the long list of French players who have withdrawn just before the start of a pick 'em too), and Chardy (27%) beating Ancic, who having sucked us in after his surprising wins in IW, reverted to his pre-IW form just as 73% of us decided to back him ... you'd almost think he was French too!

Jaydu's recently-coined alternative meaning of GEM, "Guaranteed Early Muppetry" could hardly have seemed more appropriate, though James Flake deserves a special mention too, having nearly managed to lose to Krajinovic in what the bookies (and many of us) expected to be the most one-sided match of the day.

Detailed results can be found at http://www.freewebs.com/britishtennis/competitions.html and from now on they will be updated regularly each day, with 'headlines' appearing on http://twitter.com/botb1 as well.

TEAMS

With 3 of their 7 entrants finishing day 1 in the top 9, BBC 606 are the early leaders by nearly half a point from Rusedski.co.uk, with MTF completing the top three.

TAT, the Dammitaires and early lanternes rouges Team CC are propping up the table at this stage.

THE RACE FOR WORLD NO. 1 (TEAMS)

With current no. 1s the Feddies not defending any points here, the only team that can overtake them after this contest are TAT, who are defending 2nd place points and need to win Miami with RF.com not finishing in the top three to do so. Other highly-placed teams like Rusedski.co.uk and BT.net could get very close too if the results go the right way for them, ready for an assault on the top spot next time.

INDIVIDUALS

Congratulations to Linda B (JM) and 2007 US Open BOTB winner amalyn (MT), who share the lead after getting 14/16 correct on day 1!

They are followed by 7 entrants on 13/16, Irish/Korean couple Porlock (BB) & J. Alfred Prufrock (Mrs) (BB) together with team-mate Cain Bradley (BB) and match22 (RF), nicro6 (AM), Yorkie (AM) & Boarder35m (MT), with 16 entrants a further point behind sharing 10= and completing the top 25.

At the other end of the table, MACBORG (CC) is making an early bid to be the 'lanterne rouge' with just 5/16, though only Puschkin (RG) has already managed to lose his winner pick and a quick skim across the picks lists suggests that just sallydaisy (JM), Petzchner's (sic) left thumb (IN) and elanor (RF) have lost more than one of their last 16 so far.

WINNER PICKS

People often tend to get heavily influenced by the results of the previous tournament, and the surprise Final in IW has led to there being a handful of 'out there' winner picks. The full list is:

37% Fed
32% Muzza
16% Rafa
6% Duckboy
5% Nole
1% Cilic, Sod
1 pick: Dammit, Petzschner, JCF (continuation of the over 30s theme?!), Ljubo

The only finalist picks who are not also in the above list are Isner, Tsonga and Pics Ferrer.

THURSDAY

The most crucial Thursday matches from a short-term BOTB point of view are (Q) Mello 52% v (Q) Anderson 48%, (Q) Lu 56% v Fognini 44% and Cuevas 58% v (Q) Ilhan 42%, but only Seppi, Hanescu, Chela and Petzschner have been picked to win by 80% or more, so you can expect virtually every match to have a significant effect on the table!

One of the most intriguing matches is (Q) Giraldo 61% v (LL) Daniel 39%, where Daniel leads the H2H 8-1 (if you include Challengers, etc) but all 9 previous meetings have been on clay in South America, 7 of them in Colombia.


-- Edited by steven on Thursday 25th of March 2010 04:24:27 PM