De Voest with his last hurrah ( I hope ! ) wins serve to love,  * 5 - 4

Yay!

3-6 6-2 6-4!  Yay!  At last a Brit survives the first-round "cull"!  Well done, James.

James certainly had much more pressure on De Voest's serve through the course of the match.

He served one more game, but just 81 points played on his serve compared to 97 on De Voest's serve,  4 / 13 BPs won compared to 3 / 4. 

I was getting a bit worried about his first serve % but that picked up a bit too towards the end ( was 49% overall ).

Anyway, having stayed up through the Boggo match last night, so glad this one's gone the right way 

LOL @ Akhenaten's 'report' a few pages back, I was asking for that

Those who weren't mortally offended by my 'game by game' commentary on Boggo's match against Cook can happily skip the rest of this post.

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Getting told off on here by Indiana for being anti-Boggo is quite funny given that I usually get flak for being pro-Boggo.  Just to answer the points he made (yes, I know I'd probably be better just leaving it, but there you go ...)

First of all, it was a very late night game by game, written blatantly in the hammed up, gallows humour style of a BOTB report (hence the use of the words 'muppet' and 'numpty', which are used freely by lots of us in BOTB threads without being meant to be that nasty or taken too seriously), which I realise I haven't done in a report on a GB match before. Clearly that was a mistake, and I apologise if anyone got offended, but that's all it was. I find reports like that more interesting to read later if they convey what it felt like to be following the match in real time, others may prefer just the facts with nothing added - fair enough.

I wasn't commenting on "how he handled himself in this tennis match" because I didn't know - I couldn't see it, and anyone who's been on here a while knows I never accuse Boggo of not trying, etc.

Also, my "Has everyone else gone to bed sure that he's now going to blow the 3rd?!" comment was made because nobody else seemed to be posting after the end of the 2nd set. It meant I wasn't expecting him to blow the 3rd set (he doesn't tend to do those old 3rd set collapses after losing a 1 set lead nowadays) even if some people might have thought he would. In fact, I was still expecting a happy ending right the way up until he went 2 MPs down in the final set tiebreak.

Comments like "Boggo's ability to wobble in virtually won matches must be almost without equal." weren't supposed to be cynical, just realistic - even his most devoted fans would surely admit that, win or lose, he never makes life easy for himself or for anyone following him. Again, I was still expecting him to win at that point.

I can see the argument about their rankings not being that far apart and thus we might have expected it to be very close, but I think Boggo is much better than his current ranking, and against someone outside the top 200 with a CH almost 100 below his own, on a N American hard court at a venue where he has reached QFs and SFs with some good wins in the last couple of years, I don't think it was too crazy to foresee a fairly comfortable (by Boggo standards) win, especially after he was a set and a break up.

I totally agree with Indiana that it was probably serving problems and recent wobbly form that did for him (certainly not lack of effort), but my initial reaction was genuinely that it was a very bad loss and that hasn't changed much. 

Isn't it far better to show your frustration at a loss like that because you think he's good enough to win it comfortably than to dismiss him as someone hopeless who will never have a chance of getting into the top 100, doesn't deserve WCs for the 'crime' of being GB no. 2 when there is only one Brit in the top 100 and so on?

End of rant.

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Come on Wardy!



-- Edited by steven on Wednesday 4th of August 2010 10:31:54 AM

No probs.  We've both said our pieces. 

Anyway, I'm pretty sure I didn't tell you off at any time for being anti-Boggo, given I don't think you are.  I more just commented on what you were actually saying, which I accept was generally meant in jest, but could be read in a very negative manner.  That to me left a pretty negative impression of Boggo in this particular match, which rightly or wrongly I felt was worth balancing and commenting on. 

Hey, maybe I misjudged other folk generally understanding the sort of pick'em humour being applied here, and that much was I suppose not meant as real comment on the proceedings.  Maybe more my problem, but just said it as I saw it.

Picking a fight or anything personal ?   Heck no !

Hope Boggo can soon find better form and make the most of what his abilities. I sense he really wanted to manage to push on during the second half of the year and it's not really happening just now.

I actually think our general opinions on Boggo are pretty similar

Go Boggo, you muppet