Week 31 - Challenger ($100,000) - Vancouver, Canada (Hard)

steven · Tennis legend

RE: Week 31 - Challenger ($100,000) - Vancouver, Canada (Hard)

steven · Tennis legend

Boggo's 1st serve is deserting him again in his hour of need ...

4-3* m/b

4-4*
*4-5 oh my ... please, please don't stuff this up now ...
*4-6 2 MPs

murray_2k9 · Challenger qualifying

UGLY.

steven · Tennis legend

Ace!

5-6* still 1 MP on Cook's serve

L32: Alex Bogdanovic WR 189 lost to Lester Cook (USA) WR 224 by 3-6 6-2 7-6(5) bleh

Set and a break up, served for the match in the final set, a m/b up in the final set t/b ... oh Alex, that was truly appalling

Bye bye top 200

-- Edited by steven on Tuesday 3rd of August 2010 01:35:05 AM

steven · Tennis legend

What's worse, if he'd won, he'd have probably played (7) Kendrick, whom he beat here in the same round 2 years ago.

steven · Tennis legend

On a brighter note, Flemski are a set up against Collarini/Kuznetsov

indiana · Tennis legend

That was excruciating ! Boggo by livescore

And the often slow torture of "2nd serve", point lost, especially at 4 - 2 up in the tiebreak !

He did actually appear to fight pretty well in the 3rd set, and it would arguably have been slight robbery when he broke for 5 - 4 only to ......grrrrr....

Hmmmm.....ah well......bed time...... cry

Smidster · Challenger level

Understandably after that debacle we rather lost interest in Flemski who did the business 6-4 7-6 and will play Reynolds/De Voest (USA/RSA) in the QF

Wardy will be 4th on Ct 3

-- Edited by Smidster on Tuesday 3rd of August 2010 06:51:38 AM

Count Zero · Tennis legend

oh dear, what a dire run for Alex, just the 2 wins, over Bloomers and Kerr and the shotgun 21 competition, but pretty poor loses, albeit close ones, to Lindhal and then Cook here :(

so a few weeks off to try and figure out what is going wrong before the USOQ.

RJA · Hall of fame

Desperate, desperate result.

Looks like being about 215 in the rankings come next week.

indiana · Tennis legend

Well I sat up to the early hours and as I indicated it was in many ways very frustrating, particularly the ending.

I really don't know what happened in the second set from a break up, to lose the last 5 games and his serve went totally AWOL. As was commented, maybe ultimately just gave the set up but it was bad that it seemed to go so wrong in the first place. Anyway it did seem largely related to his first serve going totally off and his second serve was totally dominated pointswise in that set.

But the first and third sets weren't too bad. I know Boggo has done pretty well here before but Cook isn't ranked that much lower than him, particularly come the next rankings

I don't really know anything about him other than I can see on his ATP Profile but he hardly seems that bad an opponent.

What I am really thinking here is that I think Steven in particular has given Boggo a really hard time, cynacism was flowing last night and much talk of muppetry. I was kinda just occasionally looking at bits, but then at the end I read right through and I was like wow.

In the third set in particular, I couldn't drag myself away from the old live score. Boggo refound his serve, well got it back to 58% from 36% cry

first serve, and I felt the third set was a real battle. Boggo saved break points in the 4th and 6th games then in the 7th and 9th games twice came back from 40 - 0 down, the second time to break. I was ready to say that was almost daylight robbery when yes, he did then lose his serve when serving for the match. His serve still did leave him at times, and did again in tiebreak, and with his second serve points less than 50%, the "second serve" message brought foreboding.

Anyway, very disappointing, but Boggo to me generally ( 2nd set aside ) seemed to really battle, indeed even in the first set that he won 6 - 3, Cook got to at least 30 in every game but Boggo got the games. Boggo has shown he can really battle before and he has not always come out on the wrong side.

I know he frustrates guys, and I was frustrated last night and with the location and the opponent, yes it was a match that I would have thought he should have won. But, gee, it wasnt that bad.

RJA · Hall of fame

indiana wrote:
I know he frustrates guys, and I was frustrated last night and with the location and the opponent, yes it was a match that I would have thought he should have won. But, gee, it wasnt that bad.

Just to claify when I said "desperate, desperate result" I was talking about the context of the match (big points defence and losing from a set and a break up).

There is a big difference between a very bad performance and a very bad result. I can't really judge the perfromance but it was a very bad result.

Ratty · County player

Jeez, give the guy a break, he's out there doing his best.

And what do you expect, he's 26 now, it's highly unlikely that anything's going to change significantly in terms of a sustained charge up the rankings.

smile

Count Zero · Tennis legend

i think its very eays to get 'down' in the heat of the moment. i do it when i follow alex's matches via LS/stream (less so watching live for obvious reasons) but the same happens when i watch and arsenal match and they are struggling, conceeding cheap goals etc.

i think boggo may have done enough recently to dispel the belief that he doesn't fight, even if perhaps he looks like he isn't cause he doesn't let his emotions run free. But he seems to be running into a lot of trouble on serve, which is getting himself into some unnecessary bother, and its costing him matches.

i think he'll be in Vancouver until the weekend as his flights already booked but if i can find out nay info i;ll try and pass it on.

steven · Tennis legend

In response to Indiana, yes I was giving Boggo a bit of a hard time last night and I realise that his opponent (though, unusually for a player in the top 250, someone I hadn't really heard of before) wasn't ranked that much lower than him so a tight loss was not a huge shock and that it looks like Boggo played pretty well for much of the match.

But:

- we were following him well into the early hours (our choice, our madness, obviously) so it's not too surprising that it was more annoying then than it seems to be in the cold light of day

- I was deliberately hamming it up a bit for 'entertainment' purposes, in much the same way as we do during BOTB when our picks are muppeting, though in reality I was fully expecting Boggo to win until right at the end - in particular, I don't expect 3rd set collapses from him these days (and indeed he didn't collapse in the 3rd)

So that's why I may have come across harsher than I meant to be.

However, let's get real too:

- he was a set and a break up, seemingly in complete control, then lost 6 games in a row ... then later got broken serving for the match (admittedly after a very impressive break from 40-0 down to get into that position) and was 4-2 up in the t/b before losing 5 of the last 6 points - that's a pretty bad set of 'chokes' by anyone's standards

- ok, Cook wasn't ranked much below him, but Boggo should be challenging for a top 100 place, not struggling to stay in the top 200 - he just shouldn't be losing to players like this, especially not at a tournament that holds good memories for him and where we have to assume the conditions suit him

I'm sure Alex doesn't feel like it was just an acceptable tight loss to a player close to him in the rankings in a 50:50 match - if he does, then there's really something wrong. That doesn't mean he should just beat himself up about it, but he does need to work out what went wrong and do something about it before it happens again.

Finally, I'd rather someone was annoyed with me for throwing away a match like that than dismissing it with "And what do you expect, he's 26 now, it's highly unlikely that anything's going to change significantly in terms of a sustained charge up the rankings" though as Ratty says, I don't doubt that Alex was trying his best.

-- Edited by steven on Tuesday 3rd of August 2010 12:47:07 PM