Week 4 - Challenger ($50,000) - Honolulu, HI, USA - Hard

Count Zero · Tennis legend

RE: Week 4 - Challenger ($50,000) - Honolulu, HI, USA - Hard

Count Zero · Tennis legend

duece

Count Zero · Tennis legend

TS gets another bp which he converts.

AB 36 31*

steven · Tennis legend

Just been following on live scores on my phone - very weird match so far! Come on Boggo!

Count Zero · Tennis legend

boggo holds on to take it into a decider

AB 36 64 00*

8

RJA · Hall of fame

The decider isn't going well

2-4*

RJA · Hall of fame

*2-5

RJA · Hall of fame

Lost the final set 6-2.

steven · Tennis legend

Well it looked like a decent draw to start the year cry

Smyczek is no slouch of course, ranked higher than Alex at the moment and top 160 less than a year ago but still, a very disappointing start to the year given the very one-sided H2H. Things can only get better ...

Count Zero · Tennis legend

Not a great start to the year, it's clear that boggo was struggling all match, and i was surprised he managed to take it to 3 sets. his serve stats in the 3rd set were awful as well, only 36% of 1st serves in, thats always going to put you under pressure, even worse when your opponent is getting 79% of his in!.

Still it's only the 1st event of the year so i guess it's not wise to read too much into it.

steven · Tennis legend

I hope those stats suggest that he was just a bit ring-rusty and/or that the conditions were really difficult for serving, and not that he is still suffering.

Count Zero · Tennis legend

Just an update, seems Alex found the conditions really tough, he said it was very hot and humid and the ball was really heavy in the air. He's always struggled with these conditions so hopefully indoors at Dallas will see a better performance.

indiana · Tennis legend

johnnylad wrote:
Not being funny but with his experience why decide to play in conditions he struggles in. Surely the Hawaiian climate fairly predicatable at this time of year?

I must admit that that was my instant reaction when I read CZ's post. So Boggo goes to Hawaii confuse

Having read a bit since, such as here http://www.to-hawaii.com/climate.php, it does appear that the moderately high humidity is generally dimniished by cooling tradewinds, although it can be more of an iissue if they are absent, which is apparently quite rare.

When I typed "Hawaii humidity" into google the first entry was a Yahoo Answers ! one : http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080323163552AAcpMnr. which was quite interesting, again mentioning the trade winds and certainly it brought out a view that Florida is generally much worse.

-- Edited by indiana on Friday 27th of January 2012 02:03:05 PM

johnnylad · Tennis legend

Not being funny but with his experience why decide to play in conditions he struggles in. Surely the Hawaiian climate fairly predicatable at this time of year?

Count Zero · Tennis legend

i think it was possibly down to a lack of choice at this time of year, but not only that, he has also being trying to push himself out his comfort zones. i think he thought he was never going to do as good as he could if he did not improve his outdoor game, which is why he has tried to move away from some of the indoor events to play more outdoor events, so for instance he played those 3 clay futures last year rather than the UK indoor hard ones.

I think he flat he could do week indoors, but to make to big (which he still believes is possible) you need more than indoors.

(Also i see Symczek just dumped out Kuznetzov 3 & 3 so obviously he is liking it over there.)