Week 18 Challenger ($50K) - Savannah USA

Smidster · Challenger level

Week 18 Challenger ($50K) - Savannah USA

British_is_Best · County player

The main draw is out and pretty horrible draws for our guys:

R1: James Ward WR 253 v Brian Dabul (ARG) 3 WR 121
R1: Jamie Baker WR 277 v Ryan Sweeting (USA) 4 WR 135

Will be very tough to get a win out of either of those two matches

British_is_Best · County player

A quick note on the two matches. Wardy has never played Dabul before. The 26 year old left hander has been as high as 82 in the world back in March 2009. Unfortunately he has been in very good form this year, winning challenger titles in Salinas and Tallahassee as well as qualifying and making the R16 of Miami. The one bright side is that all of his success has come on hard courts this year, his only clay court win coming against a player ranked outside the top 1000 in Santiago qualifying.

Jamie trails Sweeting 0-2 in their H2H with both their matches coming on hardcourt (a 3 and 0 loss in 2007 and a more competitive 4 and 4 defeat last year). The 22 year old right hander is at a career high ranking of 135 and has been playing very well this year having won a challenger in Dallas and qualifying for Memphis, Miami and Houston where he made the R16. His clay court form has traditionally not been good but as mentioned did qualify and then win a match in the main draw in Houston. Against Brits this year he beat Wardy 4 and 5 in QR2 in Houston and beat Josh 3 and 3 in the R16 of Tallahassee.

The Knight · Challenger qualifying

hoping to see a few baked sweets this week...

indiana · Tennis legend

Hopefully Wardy dabuls in a nice little win.

Vandenburg · Futures level

id give anything for a couple of 1st round challanger wins,well not anything but well anything that goes after 5 shots of vodka.

steven · Tennis legend

Those MD pairings are horrendous

QR1: (WC) Tony Mule UNR lost to Nikita Kryvonos (USA) WR 722 by 5 & 2

Taking 7 games off WR 722 isn't too bad for an unranked player who last played qualifying for any kind of world-ranked event way back in 2001, so this Mule clearly isn't a complete donkey!

Digging a bit deeper, it turns out that he is a 29-year-old who was born in Buenos Aires and brought up in the UK (I think) before moving to an academy in Florida when he was 16 and thence to North Carolina on a tennis scholarship. He was named USPTA Southern Player of the Year in 2007. See the second entry at http://www.greenvalleyswimandtennis.com/gvp/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=23&Itemid=23

He won his QWC in a pre-qualifying tournament where he was unseeded but managed to hand out 8 bakery products in 5 matches - see http://tennislink.usta.com/tournaments/draws/EventDraw.aspx?T=91415&E=1

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

James & Jamie have teamed up for the doubles & they could hardly have got a worse draw: the third seeds, Vasek Pospisil (CAN), & that bloody Swede again, Andreas Siljeström! bleh

SMC1809 · All-time great

Wardy has won the first set 6-3.

SMC1809 · All-time great

Wardy wins 6-3 6-1. biggrin

JM1138 · Lower Club Player

Wow, what a win! Don't want to jinx anything, but this is turning out to be rather a good day...

The Magician Santoro · Top national player

Awesome Win

James Ward WR 253 def. Brian Dabul (ARG) 3 WR 121, 6-3, 6-1

That's an incredible result, Didn't Dabul beat Nadal in a RG prep thing last year?

I know it wasn't a real match but you've still got to be half decent to beat Nadal on clay!

James in a good run of form at the moment

Will likely play Kei Nishikori in his next match or qualifier Cecil Mamit from the Phillipenes

The Magician Santoro · Top national player

Another nice 7 points for wardy to build on his 15 from last week, some start to soften the blow of losing 78 next week!

seagull · Hall of fame

Surely that result is the wrong way round!

SMC1809 · All-time great

When I saw the first set score I was waiting for the correction to come too.

Jamie's just underway, but the rain has started to fall.