Armchair wrote:

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But the other guys won.......

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 all three lost!!!

So, over to you Andy Murray.

Oh, and Jamie Baker.

Armchair wrote:

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What was so disheartening is that I really did feel they could have all won their
matches but didn't.
So whats the difference between the players that win and the ones that lose ?

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I think that it's really a mixture of all things that make up a good tennis player.

I'm not sure it's a particular British problem of not winning matches that they could / should of won.  Even if just partly, I would still say it's all much more down to general fundamentals I'm afraid.

I watched the match from the middle of the first set to the end. I even video'd a couple of games with my new phone, I'll post them later if they are any good.  Overall, I was impressed with the standard of the match - there wasn't a great deal of difference between the players. Mahut had a bigger serve and got a lot more free points with it. Boggo's forehand was the better of the two - reliable, hit with good pace and spin. He hit many cross court winners with it when Mahut came to the net, who despite a couple of theatrical dives couldn't get to.

Boggo was holding his serve quite comfortably in the third set. On a three occasions he was just two points away from victory on Mahut's serve. He got out of jail at 14 all ( It was about 14 all, anyway) after he went 14-4- down. He constructed good points and hit the ball with authority.  He did lose serve at around 17 all - not a particularly good service game, with his normally super reliable forehand finding the net on a couple of occasions.  His response did suprise me though: He returned a big Mahut first serve which the Frenchman thought was going long only for it to bounce inside the line.  0-15.  Another big good serve brings Mahut to the net and Bogg is streched deep and wide to his forehand. He whips a monster topspin lob. 0-30. A well constucted and agressive point gave 0-40, and another the game.  I was impressed how Boggo raised his game when he had to.   Boggo was having good success with ghosting in behind his forehand and hitting stop volleys, he won loads of ponts like this.

At around 20 all, I though Mahut had a touch of cramp iin his calf and felt suitably encouraged - must have been just a twinge though.  The standard remained high, with not many unforced errors. Boggo lost his serve at 22 all, and this time the Frenchamn made no mistake, starting his service game with nd an unreturnable.


So where now for Boggo, with much reduced funding and very few wins this year?  On this showing, he is capable of breaking the top 100. But this is what people have always said of him. He needs to get out there and win some matches.

Steve

Just a quick round-up of yesterday's action - I'm sure most people here don't need it, but having done it for AM.com, it's easy enough just to paste it in!

MEN'S QUALIFYING - TUESDAY ROUND-UP

QR2: (wc) Joshua Goodall WR 349 lost to Evgeny Kirillov (RUS) WR 236 by 4-6 6-4 10-8
QR2: Alex Bogdanovic WR 161 lost to (q27) Nicolas Mahut (FRA) WR 149 by 3-6 6-3 24-22
QR2: (wc) Daniel Evans WR 326 lost to (q30) Ricardas Berankis (LTU) WR 155 by 5 & 3

Josh's loss was very disappointing because his draw seemed to offer him a realistic chance of qualifying, but he did fight very well to come back from a double break down in the 3rd set and take the match long. Evo was a break up in each set against Berankis but unable to hold on against the Lithuanian who is becoming a very good player.

Boggo put up one of the performances of his career, showing nerve and stamina beyond what any of us thought he was capable of, with some amazing service holds (matched by a very un-GEM-like Mahut!) and a break the first time he went down a break to Mahut in the final set, but ultimately came up short.

The 4 hour match was not far off breaking the record for the longest ever qualifying set at Wimbledon, a 28-26 between Scott Warner and Matt Anger in 1989. Hopefully given time he can take some pride (and see the positives, such as proving his fitness and fighting so hard for so long) in what must have been a devastating defeat.

D-QR1: Richard Bloomfield / Marcus Willis lost to (q2) Sanchai Ratawatana / Sonchat Ratiwatana (THA) by 7-6(10) 7-6(1)
D-QR1: Josh Milton / Alex Ward lost to (q6) Rik de Voest (RSA) / Mischa Zverev (RSA) by 3 & 2

mjd wrote:

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I think this paragraph sums it up:-

"Lawn Tennis Association officials are accustomed to getting a beating over their players' failure at this time of year - but to have only two men's players in the main draw of a home Grand Slam is a yet another new low even worse than the Davis Cup defeat to Lithuania earlier this year, if that were possible."


Even more now I question the LTA objective of supporting foreign players in order to spur on British players and I feel sorry for those 'not so serious' British fans visiting Wimbledon days 1 and 2 and looking for the outside courts with Brits playing - they will have to look really hard this year - Well done LTA, NOT

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That's been the point that I/we have been making all along though, i.e. that if their objective in giving out so few main draw WCs was just to keep the press off their back, not only was that cowardly/wrong, it wasn't going to achieve that objective anyway!

There's no way that giving out so few WCs to Brits is good for the tournament - as I've said (broken record!) before, you only need to have seen the demand for places at courts where the Brits are playing to realise that.

There is an argument that it's better (in experience and ranking point terms) for Brits who'd need to draw a grass court muppet to have a realistic chance in the main draw (i.e. most of them) to go through qualifying instead, and the GB men have had some great matches at Roehampton this year, but why not come up with a system that makes this a positive thing (like Cav's choice to play qualifying this year after being offered a WC) instead of having it all tied up with the "freebie" issue if they get one and the "snubbed/stabbed in the back" issue if they don't.

It wouldn't be that hard to dream up such a system. Start by making all of the WCs the AELTC doesn't need available to GB players in ranking order to avoid all the favouritism (real or imagined), as long as there are enough players above the threshold to fill the spots. That threshold should be lower than now so that it covers everyone who would have a decent chance against a clay courter outside the top 75, so maybe top 500, but obviously it will end up higher if there are lots of players ranked well above that level.

BUT also ensure that there is no financial incentive for taking a main draw WC over a qualifying WC unless you actually win at least one match, e.g. by splitting the total MD R1 & qr1 prize money for GB WCs evenly between all of them.

There would actually be a quite a heavy incentive to take a QWC in that case, because you're more likely to get at least some points and an increment for winning at least one match than if you go straight into the main draw and, far more importantly, the players are likely to feel far more positive about that decision if they've met the target to get the choice and then taken that choice themselves.

I realise what I've just written needs clarification in order for it to appear totally transparent, but hopefully it's possible to get the gist and it wouldn't be hard to turn it into a set of clearly defined 'rules' so that everyone knew where they stood.

They could even upgrade the playoffs so that the winner got a MD WC and the other semi-finalists got QWCs, or have some kind of ranking points 'credit' that could be taken into account if a player had been out injured for a while, or an age-related 'credit' to skew the system towards younger players - basically, anything that was made clear well in advance (preferably a year in advance), stopped MD WCs going to waste (unless those eligible actually chose to play qualifying instead) and made going through qualifying a positive choice.

 

-- Edited by steven on Wednesday 16th of June 2010 09:33:45 AM