Week 16 Challenger - Napoli, Italy - €30K+H (Clay)

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

RE: Week 16 Challenger - Napoli, Italy - €30K+H (Clay)

stevemcqueen · Futures qualifying

That is a monster good performance from Dan! Four consecutive wins on the dirt, that is not a common occurance for an English player.

Respect!

Reeltime · Satellite level

spud wrote:
Solid result for Dan, his best of the year?

Not quite in terms of ranking (Martin 175) But to beat Viola on Clay is a great result :)

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

Looks as though it's going to be one of those days for the more highly ranked players: Thomas Schoorel (NED) has already taken out the top seed & WC, Jérémy Chardy (FRA), by 4 & 3, while Dan's fellow qualifiers, Pavol Cervenak (q3/SVK) & Michael Yani (q4/USA), have dumped out Simon Stadler (GER) & David Guez (FRA) by 4 & 1 & 6-2 4-6 6-3 respectively! disbelief I suppose the three points Dan picked up for qualifying & now six for reaching the second round (not to mention at least 530) make it all worthwhile! wink

indiana · Tennis legend

That's really excellent stuff by Dan, very good to see., 3 good qualifying wins followed by the Viola win for 9 points. It almost seems a poor reward compared to what can be won in futures. But it is good to see Dan having a go here and making a mark, and of course if he could even go further there is then reallly good reward.

Of course, Dan is one player who isn't fazed by clay with quite a number of future clay finals achieved in the second half of 2009 and early 2010 when he was on the rise to a CH of 337 last May.

I don't quite know why things went so much into reverse results and rankingswise in the 2nd half of 2010, causing him to fall back outside the top 500. But it certainly seems to me from that previous ranking and some of the performances that he comes out with at times that that with all things in place Dan could be at least up with the other two Dans inside the top 300.

Still only 20, in fact the youngest of that pretty good 89 / 90 group of players, if he is now feeling more comforttable with his game, it would be really good to see him start to build some good consistent results.

Maza1987 · Challenger level

well done dan

steven · Tennis legend

Really good stuff from Dan

L32: (Q) Dan Smethurst WR 509 beat Matteo Viola (ITA) WR 193 by 6-3 4-6 6-3 biggrin

L16: (Q) Dan Smethurst WR 509 v (3) Frederico Gil (POR) WR 64

Gil upset Stakh, Mayer and Monfils before losing 2 & 1 to Muzza in MC last week, so Dan's best hope is probably that Gil is knackered!

JM1138 · Lower Club Player

Meh, what's 450-odd ranking places between friends?! Go for it Dan!

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

Colin & David had a walkover* against Polansky & Veic in the first round of the doubles, so:

QF: Guillermo Alcaide & Daniel Muñoz (ESP/ESP) vs (2) Colin Fleming & David Martin (USA)

* Colin's doing rather well out of walkovers at the moment, but I don't suppose he cares! wink

The Magician Santoro · Top national player

Yeah he should buy a lottery ticket or something the amount of luck he's got

British_is_Best · County player

Superb win by Dan, hopefully he can get himself moving up the rankings to be challenging Evo and Cox for 'Britain's top tennis playing Dan' soon. Btw stream for the match against Gil can be found at: http://www.livescorehunter.com/Livescores/Livescore-Tennis.html

The Magician Santoro · Top national player

Smetty loses 1st set 6-3 with a double break.

Smetty doing pretty well for the first time ive seen him, competing with Gil even creating a few break points, he's had some great net play and a cracking drop shot. The only negative i'd say is that he uses a slice one handed backhand, which Gil is targetting as it doesn't offer much in the way of attack.

Good luck for 2nd set Smetty.

The Magician Santoro · Top national player

Dan goes down 6-3, 6-3 which can only be expected.

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

Stircrazy wrote:
Colin & David had a walkover* against Polansky & Veic in the first round of the doubles, so:
QF: Guillermo Alcaide & Daniel Muñoz (ESP/ESP) vs (2) Colin Fleming & David Martin (USA)
* Colin's doing rather well out of walkovers at the moment, but I don't suppose he cares!

Would you Adam & Eve it: another walkover! disbelief Mind you, Muñoz lost his second-round singles match against the Italian WC, Matteo Trevisan, in three hours & 24 minutes this afternoon (two tie-breaks & then 1-6 in the third), so either he was completely knackered or he picked up an injury. Can't see the boys' SF opponents being quite so accommodating:

SF: Travis Parrott & Andreas Siljeström (USA/SWE) vs (2) Colin Fleming & David Martin (USA)!

helki · Futures qualifying

Money for old rope. biggrin Must be the easiest share of 650 and 29 points he's ever received. He'll have forgotten how to play by the time things get serious. wink Carry on Col.