Week 38 - ATP 250 Series - Bucharest, Romania ( Red Clay )

The Magician Santoro · Top national player

RE: Week 38 - ATP 250 Series - Bucharest, Romania ( Red Clay )

The Magician Santoro · Top national player

sorry that was 28% first set, 64 this one

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The Magician Santoro · Top national player

DF No.5

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The Magician Santoro · Top national player

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Game Over

The Magician Santoro · Top national player

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The Magician Santoro · Top national player

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The Magician Santoro · Top national player

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The Magician Santoro · Top national player

Loses the breaker 7-0

steven · Tennis legend

3 Brits in ATP QR2s today (the round you need to win to get some points), and by a variety of methods they all won 6 games. 'Pointless' in more ways than one, or worth a go and brave to try it?

Ratty · County player

steven wrote:

'Pointless' in more ways than one, or worth a go and brave to try it?

Yes, a bit disheartening when you build your ranking and confidence with some good results at Futures level, and then step up to the real pro game and get nowhere.

It would be interesting to know how many people who don't have career trajectories like Nadal, etc, manage to work their way slowly up the rankings so that they can do well at ATP level events .... and how many give up without ever making a living.

I can have a good guess, but hey, this is a fans message board, so ......

Go Wardy, Smethinator and Slabbovitch!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

indiana · Tennis legend

With Jamie Baker's defeat in Turkey, James will be the only one of 12 guys that went into battle this week in ATPs and Challengers ( all but Jamie in qualifying ) to emerge with any points.

The 12 include some who clearly should be playing at least Challengers ( eg James and Jamie B ), some doubles specialists having a go ( eg. Ross and Colin ) and quite a few that were shall we say challenging themselves.

Steven's query, with respect particularly to the ATP ventures, as to whether some players were being brave or just partaking in literally pointless ventures, I find a difficult one.

With the points that such as Cox and Milton are racking up in futures back home, they would seem to be missing out on possibly very decent ranking points. I think though myself that the odd venture is reasonable, maybe some players level will improve as they play better players.

Re the 5 ATP players, 2 were perfectly fair enough ( Hutchins and Fleming ) as doubles specialists having a go. The other 3 ( Smethurst, Wardinator and Slabinsky ) I think in their cases actually fair enough too as it is not as if they habitually are trying and failing in such ventures. As I said I think the odd venture is reasonable.

It is actually one or two of this week's Challenger players that I more have general queries as to their schedules, more particularly Eaton ( as I have mentioned before ) and Inglot ( if he still has pretentions as a singles player )

-- Edited by indiana on Monday 20th of September 2010 10:03:57 PM

Shhh · Challenger level

An interesting debate and I am not sure where I stand. I would have thought that playing the same level, whatever that may be, can cause performances to go stale to a small degree???? Mixing up a schedule for different challenges probably shades it for me as a good thing to do.

Like most fans I tend to look at points but of course the prize money and travel expense must surely affect the hard up player? For a positive example of "giving it a go" though Richard Bloomfield's semi shows the power of when such a gamble pays off.

Josh · Challenger level

Maybe part of reason Cox and Milton are picking up so many points back home at the moment is that a few of their 'competitors' are playing overseas. With the same group of 8-10 guys who we would hope to be getting deep into Futures entering the same tournaments there are going to be some who don't go as deep as they hoped. With the Wardinator, Smethurst, Slabba, Pauffers (?), Rice all missing the current set of 3 (or 2 in Slabba's and Dr No's case) there are more opportunities for those left home - i.e Cox, Milton, Evo, Willis, Thornley - to take advantage of. Maybe when the next lot come around Cox and Milts could be sent abroad and players like Wardinator and Smethurst could take advantage of the good points available for winning or reaching the final.

Obviously there is the other point of view where the more players we have in a tournament the more chance there is of getting an all Brit semi-final or final. Maybe raitioning the number of home tournaments our 2nd tier players can play could help reduce the strength of some of our Futures and give the guys more chances to pick up points.

Not sure whether this makes sense or not, but on the back of 2 very successful tournaments where some of the more likely protagonists are occupied elsewhere it did make me wonder. Also it helps that barely any high ranked overseas players have bothered coming over which I guess is always useful.

indiana · Tennis legend

Yes, interesting Josh, and I see what you are saying.

With futures only really giving particularly worthwhile points from the semi finals on, there is indeed some arguement for only having a limited number of the real GB "contendors" playing in them and others going overseas to either play foreign futures or indeed take their chances in Challengers and ATPs. And I can see the arguement that no matter how much the odds may be against, one or two might do a Bloomers occasionally through just having a really great week and / or the draw opening up.

I don't know myself how much choice the individual players have on their schedule and how much ( more particularly for funded players ) the LTA plans things, i.e. to what extent could / would they say Evo, Cox, Milton go abroad during the next batch of GB fututes Wardinator, Smethers, Slabba or whoever lead the home challenge. Does anyone understand more how the LTA can / does influence such things ?

On the tangental point re all the success home players have had in futures since early July, Josh mentions barely any high-ranked overseas players competing, does anyone have a feel if the GB futures have generally had lower ranked fields lately than normally and indeed are the GB future fields lately or generally lower ranked than most European future fields ? I am wondering if the GB success is just the play better at home syndome or has life been made rather easier for them ?

steven · Tennis legend

indiana wrote:
On the tangental point re all the success home players have had in futures since early July, Josh mentions barely any high-ranked overseas players competing, does anyone have a feel if the GB futures have generally had lower ranked fields lately than normally and indeed are the GB future fields lately or generally lower ranked than most European future fields ? I am wondering if the GB success is just the play better at home syndome or has life been made rather easier for them ?

It has indeed felt like all the Brit-bashers (especially the French ones, who are usually all over tournaments like this even if there are Futures on in France at the same time) have been giving these tournaments a miss, and it may be that we had a glut of them at once (Robert, various other GEMs, Nielsen, Capkovic et al), all of whom are now playing Challengers or ATPs instead, and nobody else has come in to fill the gap, or those that have (e.g. Coco) just aren't quite as good. Oops, watch him win the title this week now! ashamed

In fact, the latest three tournaments were fairly GB-dominated last year too, with 2/3 GB winners and 2/3 GB runners-up:

- Cumberland 2009 had (1) Niland, (3) Insausti & (5) Matsui, who reached the Final, but there was an all-GB SF in the bottom half and Flembo won the title
- Wrexham 2009 had Bloomers as the top seed but he was beaten by Andrew Anderson (who was the other top half SF-ist at Cumberland too) and Grigelis (unseeded) beat Dr No in the Final
- Nottingham (which came after Wrexham last year) had all-GB SFs

The big difference in the summer last year was that there were only two post-Wimbledon grass court Futures and they were both 15Ks, thus attracting stronger players from overseas and Brits won 1/2, whereas this year there were three of them, all 10Ks with weaker fields, and Brits won 3/3.