Week 6 - Great Britain F4 ($10,000) - Wirral (Hard)

The Magician Santoro · Top national player

RE: Week 6 - Great Britain F4 ($10,000) - Wirral (Hard)

indiana · Tennis legend

Justified ?

I'm kind of thinking that Ed hasn't achieved all these recent results by luck, and I was pretty impressed too with his competitiveness in the two finals with Harrison, even though he lost one.

But yes, it would be good to hear impressions about him and indeed Goodall if they contest the final.

Jack Buxton · Club Coach

All GB semis - woohoo!!!! Great stuff. So with 16 more points to allocate the rankings a week on Monday should be looking better than they have in a long time?

indiana · Tennis legend

Depth is much better. We now clearly want this leading in time to more regular challenger players and top 200 players. At the moment we are probably a way off even adding really to our top 300 players, other than hopefully Boggo's reentry.

However, numbers coming through lower down is an important stepping stage.

Been some real encouragement in the British futures series. Now some players need to spread their wings and produce results elsewhere.

indiana · Tennis legend

No British men are defending any points at all a week on Monday, so there should be plenty blue in the top 25 table !

Jaggy1876 · Grand Slam Champion

Hmmm I'm not so sure about these comments. Most of the points gained are from Brits playing each other safety in numbers. We ll see how many points they pick up outside the UK before back patting. Most of the guys earning points just now bar Corrie have been here before but once they get to 300-350 in the rankings they become stuck. Milton Smethurst Ward being class examples.

They need to move on to challengers now. I wouldn't say strength in depth is decent until we have at least 4 or 5 players in the top 200.
In the British events last year where there were more non-uk players competing the results weren't so good.

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

SF: James Cluskey (IRL) & Sean Thornley WR 405 defeated (3) Dan Smethurst & Alex Ward WR 1377 by 2-6 6-4 [10-4]

Jack Buxton · Club Coach

agreed indiana, lots of encouragement.....

Bob in Spain · Tennis legend

Jaggy1876 wrote:
Hmmm I'm not so sure about these comments. Most of the points gained are from Brits playing each other safety in numbers. We ll see how many points they pick up outside the UK before back patting. Most of the guys earning points just now bar Corrie have been here before but once they get to 300-350 in the rankings they become stuck. Milton Smethurst Ward being class examples.

They need to move on to challengers now. I wouldn't say strength in depth is decent until we have at least 4 or 5 players in the top 200.
In the British events last year where there were more non-uk players competing the results weren't so good.

I just love your positivity wink

korriban · Challenger level

An all-Brit semi which is very pleasing.

So Ed has won 14 of his 16 matches this season, almost all in straight sets, with his two losses in very tight 3 setters, the last of which was a lost third set tie-break in the Sheffield final. His victories have included many over higher ranked players (often being the bane of the #2 seed). He must be favourite to prevail over JM tomorrow, despite a lower ranking.

To be doing this now for 4 weeks in a row in 4 different venues is clearly no fluke - he has raised his game to a new level....dare I say it, Challenger level. Others seem to have a 1 or 2 week purple patch, then fade.

Firstly we need to know the magic formula.....hope he gets interviewed an spells it out.

Secondly, we need to see Ed (and hopefully others) building on this higher standard game and moving up a level to Challengers and $15k futures, to test themselves out against top 200 players week in week out.

But we only have 2 Challengers left in GB, and they are both in June! Which means 3-4 week European, North American or Asian Challenger/big futures tours - ideally we need a Corrie, Evans, Smethurst, Pauffley "axis" of 22-24 year olds (to add to the older James, Jamie and Alex "axis") with a Golding, Edmund, Broady, Bambridge "axis" to follow on shortly behind. Other names can of course be added!

Looking at the playing schedule to week 9...........not much sign of this yet!!!! If travel/living costs is the problem for the non Team Aegon players in this 22-24 year olf group (since the financial risk is all theirs), perhaps the LTA might consider funding travel expenses for Challengers and ATP events for these older players, but not Futures - ......just an idea, but at least it means the LTA would be supporting players who actively progress and test their games, and don't just stay at home playing $10ks (due to financial constraints or deficiencies in their games!)

blob · All-time great

Bob in Spain wrote:
Jaggy1876 wrote:
Hmmm I'm not so sure about these comments. Most of the points gained are from Brits playing each other safety in numbers. We ll see how many points they pick up outside the UK before back patting. Most of the guys earning points just now bar Corrie have been here before but once they get to 300-350 in the rankings they become stuck. Milton Smethurst Ward being class examples.

They need to move on to challengers now. I wouldn't say strength in depth is decent until we have at least 4 or 5 players in the top 200.
In the British events last year where there were more non-uk players competing the results weren't so good.
I just love your positivity

I think Jaggy1876 might have been in Eilat yesterday morning wink

indiana · Tennis legend

Hmm. jaggy, I try to have a balanced outlook on things.

There have quite clearly been a number of good results over overseas players, not just Brits beating Brits. But I clearly also suggested that these needed reproduced abroad.

Good "depth" kind of depends on how deep you are looking. It has undoubtably significantly improved over the last year in the 400 to 700 range. Again I acknowledged that this was just a base point and that I saw little prospect of any real adding in the relatively near future to our top 300 numbers.

Otherwise most of us, such as myself and korriban, would agree with you that we need more top 300 ( at least ) players. But Rome wsdn't built in a day and we can acknowledge the good as well as the bad.

There appears to be some wish to appear contrary for the sake of it, and to be the voice of "realism" as if most of us who have followed British tennis for years only wear rose tinted specs.

steven · Tennis legend

The Magician Santoro wrote:
Great stuff to see. Can we say that the depth in British tennis is growing to be the best it's been in years? Excluding Murray the top 20 point earners are 35 points better off than last year's end of week 6, 83 points ahead of 2011, 66 ahead of 2010, 112 ahead of 2009 and 152 of 2008. That's not including the extra 16 points guaranteed and any further points that James Ward gets. Obviously these extra futures help with points, but I think the depth is certainly getting stronger.

It depends what you mean by depth. I would say yes, but many (especially in the media) mean the number of players in the top 100 (or at least the top 200) when they talk about depth, so they would probably argue it's the worst it has ever been!

Because of GB's dire record in Challengers over the last 3 years (especially in 2010 and 2012, though without Boggo, our record in Challengers would have pretty atrocious for most of the previous decade too), it can also be argued that the increase in depth we are referring to is mainly coming through Brits dominating the GB Futures in a way they didn't before. That could be because there are less Stéphane Roberts and the like coming over and hoovering up the GB Futures points (I'm not sure why that is but there is an obvious risk that this could start happening again, in which case the 'points tap' could quickly dry up, especially now that the points are so much more heavily skewed to SFs and Finals than they were a few years ago) or because the Brits playing Futures are getting stronger, which would be a good thing, albeit partly due to some GB players staying at Futures level when in the past they might have played more Challengers.

The reality is probably a mixture of those factors. Christian Harrison is the most obvious example of an overseas player coming over for GB Futures and doing well (he went 10-2 against Brits over the last three weeks), but on the other hand Ed and Marcus did manage to beat him and three more Brits (Evo, Bloomers and Toby Martin) took him to 3 sets, so he wasn't getting it all his own way as some up and coming overseas players have in the past.

Because we see the lower levels of the Pro Tour mainly from a British perspective, it is hard to gauge whether the behaviour of players from other countries is changing too - given the reduction in the number of Challengers in Europe, it is more than possible that players from other countries are staying down at Futures level for longer than they otherwise would have as well.

All this means that until we get more players regularly taking part in Challengers, we won't know for sure whether things are improving or not in terms of prospects for getting more Brits in the top 100. What we can say though is that having a lot more players in the top 750 (which seems to be about the level at which players are likely to be DAs for 10K Futures more often than not) is a good start and whatever the exact reasons, I'd rather see the home Futures being dominated by Brits more than they used to be than the other way round.

I would certainly be in favour of the LTA finding a way to help the better players among those not on the AEGON list have a go at more overseas Challengers. I fear the initial results might be dire, but that could well be because the only way for players to improve their results at Challenger level is to get used to playing that level of opponent on a regular basis.

indiana · Tennis legend

I meant to say we agree we need more top 300 players and also players competing in challengers ( to some extent the two are clearly linked, though some should still aim more for challengers anyway ).

I can't edit with my phone after I have posted !

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

SF: Lewis Burton & Neal Skupski UNR defeated George Coupland & Josh Ward-Hibbert UNR by 6-7(9) 6-3 [10-5]

So

Final: James Cluskey (IRL) & Sean Thornley WR 405 vs Lewis Burton & Neal Skupski UNR