Week 12 Challenger - Pingguo, China - $35,000+H - Hard

The Knight · Challenger qualifying

RE: Week 12 Challenger - Pingguo, China - $35,000+H - Hard

indiana · Tennis legend

The Knight wrote:

really kind draws right there :/

Yes, no luck there. The good Challenger draws are in Bath smile

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

Doubles:

R1: (1) Colin Fleming & Ross Hutchins vs Mao-Xin Gong & Zhe Li (CHN/CHN)

Col & Ross beat the Chinese pair by 7-6(5) 6-3 at exactly the same stage in Guangzhou last week, so let's hope they can manage a repeat performance this week.

MiloTheCat · Lower Club Player

impressive win for Colin 6-2 5-7 6-3

SMC1809 · All-time great

That should be enough to put Colin in the top 25! With more to come??

steven · Tennis legend

L32: (Q) Jamie Baker WR 401 lost to (1) Go Soeda (JPN) WR 105 by 6-3 7-6(6)

L32: (Q) Colin Fleming WR 1185 beat (6) Tatsuma Ito (JPN) WR 169 by 6-2 5-7 6-3 biggrin

L16: (Q) Colin Fleming WR 1185 v Karan Rastogi (IND) WR 293 or (PR) Arnau Brugues-Davi (ESP) WR 376 (CH 218 last May)

As things stand, this win takes Colin to around WR 850 and into the GB top 20 - in just 2 weeks.

British_is_Best · County player

Wow! Very impressive from Colin, maybe time to give the Singles career another shot? Decent fight from Baker as well, which hopefully bodes well for the future.

British_is_Best · County player

It will be (PR) Arnau Brugues-Davi (ESP) WR 376 in the R16 as he beat Rastogi by 1 and 2

freerider · Futures level

wouldn't it be nice if we had a doubles specialist turn into a singles specialist, very encouraging couple of weeks so far from flembo

steven · Tennis legend

freerider wrote:

wouldn't it be nice if we had a doubles specialist turn into a singles specialist, very encouraging couple of weeks so far from flembo

Now that would be something worth celebrating!

Somehow I doubt it's going to happen though - doubles prize money at ATPs compares too favourably with singles prize money at Challengers, let alone Futures.

LordBrownof · Futures level

But surely as a professional sportsperson, he wants to get to the top. If he can beat top 200 players after so long not playing regular singles, the potential is there to be top 100. the margins are so slight he should give it a go at least for a year.

And what about combined singles and doubles challenger money, is it negligible?

steven · Tennis legend

LordBrownof wrote:

But surely as a professional sportsperson, he wants to get to the top. If he can beat top 200 players after so long not playing regular singles, the potential is there to be top 100. the margins are so slight he should give it a go at least for a year.

And what about combined singles and doubles challenger money, is it negligible?

It depends whether getting to the top means maximising his singles potential or playing in as many top level tournaments as possible and from some of his tweets, it strikes me that his heart still wants to do the former but his head dictates the latter, and it's not hard to see why it is a dilemma.

Also, I'm not sure that beating a player ranked 169 (as fine an achievement as it is) who plays most of his tournaments in the Far East (where ranking points are not quite as hard to come by as they are in Europe) is strong evidence of top 100 potential, though I agree that it would be good if Colin could give it a go and see where he gets to.

Hopefully the fact that the points gained from these two weeks mean it will no longer be touch and go whether he gets into Challenger qualifying will mean we will see him playing singles more often for at least the next 12 months and if he carries on picking up points, he'll be able to have a go at qualifying for ATPs when he is playing doubles there as well - the one difficulty (and it's quite a big one!) being that if he goes deep in doubles one week, he won't be able to sign in for singles qualifying for the following week.

From the 2011 rule book, 2010 prize money in US$ (QFs onwards, and per player in the case of doubles) was as follows:

35K+H Chall. singles: QF: 1020, SF: 1755, RU: 3000, Win: 5000
35K+H Chall. doubles: QF: 225, SF: 380, RU: 625, Win: 1100

And for a bog-standard ATP 250 like Newport:

ATP 250 doubles: QF: 1985, SF: 3465, RU: 6400, Win: 12175

Looking at those figures, if you think Colin's level is such that he could regularly be reaching singles QFs and doubles Finals in Challengers OR just doubles QFs in ATP 250s, then playing singles and doubles in Challengers might well amount to about the same in financial terms.

However, as I mentioned above, until he got ranked high enough to get direct entry into singles in Challengers, every deep run in doubles would mean missing out on singles the following week if the tournaments were any distance apart.

-- Edited by steven on Tuesday 22nd of March 2011 04:41:03 PM

indiana · Tennis legend

I can't say I'd picked up from anywhere Colin showing any particular inclination to give singles more of a go. It just seemed to me he was taking the chance to enter singles where he could fit it in with his doubles, as he has quite often done in the past.

But he has done bloody well these last 2 weeks !!!

How many GB men singles players would we seriously think could quite likely string that set of results together ? Err, not a lot. I'd venture max 3 ( and one would be a Boggo in form ! ).

I remember being quite encouraged how well Colin initially got back into singles after his break and looked forward to following his progress, so was a bit disappointed he so soon turned his attentions to being a doubles specialist.

I am sure the majority of us would really like him to give singles a proper all out go. But money does matter, and unfortunately there does seem the dilemma for Colin that Steven analyses above.

Pity. I would just love to see how high he could really get, and if he never makes the move, I suspect a part of Colin will always wonder.

wolf · Tennis legend

So Flembo has comfortably outperformed our DC number two these past two weeks.

Maybe we should kick those overrated singles specialists out of the team after all. smile

chavkev · Intermediate Club Player

Colin won again 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 in just under two hours. He looked out of it at some points but did well to escape. His quarter final opponent will be the number one seed Go Soeda.