BBD 3-6 *6-6 Tiebreak.

Nick down 1-6 3-5* Has one break back

Willis is a break down early on

Interestingly Jamie has a 1:0 H2H record against Dolgopolov, beating the Ukranian 7-6 in the 3rd set of Doha Q1 back in 2007, although its an understatement to suggest that Dolgopolov is much improved since then! The Ukranian has never played on grass though, so Jamie has a shot.

James and Lopez have never met before but the Spaniard's record on grass doesnt really need an introduction, arguably he is the title favourite here so a dire draw.

Just got back...

Goodall definately was trying (or at least it looked like he was), but just was not playing very well at all and probably didn't deserve to win the match. It may have been that he was saving himself for Wimbledon qualies as there is 320 euros for winning a match which would definately cover the cost of travel for a day, but didn't look like it.

Burton though looked pretty good, and should have beaten Kunitsyn in round two (doesn't look like that match has appeared on the scoreboard so I guess no-one knows about it). Kunitsyn won 5-7, 7-5, 6-2? (not sure about the final set score but he was 4-0 down and it was over when I got back to it).

Burton had a match point at 5-4 in the second set but was perhaps a bit too conservative and but a backhand in the net, and earlier in that game had missed three second serve returns as well. Had 3 or 4 chances to break back at 6-5 as well but Kunitsyn upped his game a bit and Burton missed a couple of easy balls. And it looks like he just fell away in the final set.

Burton though has a massive serve, good volleys, and is very strong on both the forehand and backhand sides. How he is unranked I don't know as he looked like a top 200 player at worst.

Fleming looked pretty decent and should have won the second set but threw away a break of serve and then missed a couple of simple backhands in the tiebreak.

Inglot and van der merwe were pretty evenly matched but VDM was the better at making passing shots and in the end he began to pick Inglot off a bit too often, although Inglot played a pretty poor tiebreak in the end.

Willis was matching DGT but didn't take his chances and DGT did, and that's what separated them in the end. Willis played a dreadful few points from 30-0 up to get broken at 4-4 missing a couple of easy shots and then hitting a volley that was going wide. DGT though actually looked reasonably comfortable on a grass court surprisingly and serve/volleyed quite a bit, so he isn't the grass clown I thought he was.

Golding matched Lapentti but threw the tiebreak away with a volley that barely reached the net before bouncing and then double faulting on match point. He'd earlier saved a couple of match points with brilliant passing shots and had he taken the second set, he'd probably have gone on to win the match.

Nishikori never got out of first gear but still won his matches very easily. Got a sneaky feeling that he may win the title this week as he will be up for it.

Klein cannot seem to avoid drama at Eastbourne. He looked very good in round one against Broady but may have defaulted in round two for not being ready for play. Don't know for sure, but he was called to court four or five times, and then about 10 minutes later, they called for another match to that court, so I presume he didn't turn up!

^^^

I imagine they can't schedule Lalo's match on Sunday given that he was still in Queens today and there is probably some unwritten rule not to make players play on successive days in tournaments unless they have to.

(and anyway, if Lalo was told he was playing Sunday, he'd probably withdraw in protest and make the tournament even weaker in terms of star power)

I guess they did want to schedule Ward's match for tomorrow but once the draw made it pretty much impossible to do that, went for Baker instead.

(Although, a provisional order of play did have Karol Beck playing tomorrow despite the fact that at the time he was a set up in his doubles semi-final in Queens, which he went onto win, so obviously whoever was doing the schedule wasn't that aware of what else was going on.)

Give Burton an Main draw WC for Wimby, looks like hes pretty good, even if unranked ;).