Week 23 - Challenger (€64,000) - Aegon Trophy - Nottingham, GB (Grass)

Madeline · Admin:Moderator + Tennis Legend

RE: Week 23 - Challenger (€64,000) - Aegon Trophy - Nottingham, GB (Grass)

DavidC · Tennis legend

Madeline wrote:
Is that why the scores have disappeared? I've been watching Andy on the tv, so I'm out of the loop.

Yes they abandoned play for the day some time ago - oop for Thursday is already up starting with the unfinished matches at 11am

steven · Tennis legend

daisy wrote:
Not reported here that I can see but I've just read this on another forum:
James Ward also suffered a strange injury in the first game of his match against Baker. Baker hit a let serve and Ward didn't get out of the way quickly enough. The ball seemed to hit his left hand. He turned to face where I was sitting (facing away from Baker and the camera) with a huge grimace on his face and mouthed a few curse words under his breath. He spent the next few points stretching out his fingers and rotating his wrist etc. The trainer was called at 0-3 and I noticed he has taping around one or two of his fingers. Maybe this contributed to his terrible game play although he did pick up a little before the rain hit.
Someone tweeted about that at the time, I hadn't realised it hadn't been posted here. Hopefully no long-term effects.
daisy wrote:
Unfortunately, Fizy isn't getting much by way of good press on that particular ^^^ forum devoted to mens tennis. Most don't realise it was AJF's first Challenger appearance.
It'd be good to know if he is physically alright and how he thought he played versus Nielsen (Brit basher extraordinaire).

That's MTF for you - either someone's 'utterly brilliant' or 'completely crap' - there are some decent posters, but it's not generally where one goes to find balanced, constructive comments!

Fitzy may of course tell us the real story himself at some stage, but just from the stats, it's obvious that he had a nightmare on serve in the 1st set, with just 25% 1st serves in and 8 DFs. Whether that was due to nerves or a physical problem, it'd hardly be surprising if having such big problems on serve (in what for him was a very big match) led to the rest of his game breaking down a bit too, and hardly surprising that a player like Nielsen took advantage mercilessly.

If I remember right, a couple of years ago Fitzy quite regularly had nightmare serving days like that in Futures, and that's why his ranking stayed in 4 figures. He seems to have almost completely cut those out over the last year or so as well as making other improvements and as a result, he has moved from outside the top 1000 to inside the top 500 in just over 12 months.

One day like yesterday shouldn't be allowed to take anything away from that and if he was able to turn around his Futures form so dramatically, there's no reason why he shouldn't, in time, be able to start beng a lot more competitive in Challenger matches too.

-- Edited by steven on Thursday 7th of June 2012 06:00:43 AM

daisy · County player

Not reported here that I can see but I've just read this on another forum:

James Ward also suffered a strange injury in the first game of his match against Baker. Baker hit a let serve and Ward didn't get out of the way quickly enough. The ball seemed to hit his left hand. He turned to face where I was sitting (facing away from Baker and the camera) with a huge grimace on his face and mouthed a few curse words under his breath. He spent the next few points stretching out his fingers and rotating his wrist etc. The trainer was called at 0-3 and I noticed he has taping around one or two of his fingers. Maybe this contributed to his terrible game play although he did pick up a little before the rain hit.

Unfortunately, Fizy isn't getting much by way of good press on that particular ^^^ forum devoted to mens tennis. Most don't realise it was AJF's first Challenger appearance.

It'd be good to know if he is physically alright and how he thought he played versus Nielsen (Brit basher extraordinaire).

Shhh · Challenger level

I hope he is able to explain. I think we all know how big the match was for him so am really feeling for him at the moment. You almost hope it was an injury if you know what I mean!

freerider · Futures level

according to someone on mtf play is indoors today

freerider · Futures level

just shows how little the posters on mtf actually know:

British Tennis @BritishTennis
#NFT12 Play is due to start on centre court at 11.30 in Nottingham at the AEGON Trophy. Let's hope it stays dry!