Same reason that stopped him from playing Nottingham and caused his retirement at Wimbledon I guess. At one point it was tonsillitis that was stopping him but I wouldn't have thought that could have lingered around for so long. Not that I am an expert by any means.
Dan down to just 15 ranking points then, ranked below Fleming and Illingworth. Hopefully having to qualify for most Futures will give him extra motivation and he can try to accumulate some points rather than relying on 1 big score. Won't be long until Milton finds himself in the same position either.
Having won a title here last year, I expected Dan to kick on from that and move up towards the top 300 and beyond, but instead he seems to have gone backwards.
He hasn't used the higher ranking to his benefit where he should in theory have had much easier draws, at least in the first rounds, and hasn't played like a top 500 player for much of the year, except for the odd really good result.
Hopefully it will be the spur he needs to start winning matches again and get the ranking back up.
Dan doesn't need to look far for someone who has managed this year to initially come through a lot of future qualifiers and then pick up a few main draw results, built on that, picked up more wins and points and allied to a good challenger performance taken his ranking close to the top 500 and above where Dan started the week.
What Wardinator has done in the first half of this year, Dan is well capable of doing in the second half and hopefully he can indeed start to rebulid after a very disappointing period.
-- Edited by indiana on Wednesday 23rd of June 2010 12:00:09 PM
Don't see it myself, Wardinator has been steadily progressing year on year while Cox seems to have stopped in his progression. I'm sure he'll end the year higher than what his new ranking will be but I think outside the top 600.
