Week 8 - Spain F3 ($10,000) - Murcia (Clay)

Julia Carrot · All-time great

RE: Week 8 - Spain F3 ($10,000) - Murcia (Clay)

Madeline · Admin:Moderator + Tennis Legend

I just wanted to add my belated two-pennorth of thanks to Bob. I'm missing so much tennis at the moment because of home problems, but that was a brilliant read!

paulisi · Tennis legend

Excellent report Bob - it is much appreciated and a great insight. Shame there won't be more this week...

steven · Tennis legend

blob's right, Bob's very interesting and very balanced report deserves a wider audience, so I've tweeted a link (which might not get it as wide an audience as it deserves, but should result in at least a few more Kyle/GB fans reading it) - hope that's ok, Bob

Bob in Spain · Tennis legend

Many thanks for all the kind comments. I have never considered myself as a writer of any kind and certainly not as a sports journalist. I am just a mad keen sports fan who is passionate about seeing GB players do well. But to travel the world just to watch and write on GB tennis matches ?? - as we say here in Spain, "Ojala" (I wish!)

Steven - thanks for the tweet. If I was annoyed about tweeting a link, it would be a bit late now LOL. But no, its cool - thanks. I notice you "named" Kyle in the tweet so he will get a direct link and may have already visited here to read the report. Hope I haven't said anything to upset him (or his coach) !!

And if you are reading this "Keds", onward and upward. Focus on Cartagena. Yesterday is nothing more than a statistic now. Stay positive.

I will continue to try and give reports from local events as and when time permits. I have seriously considered driving over to Portugal to report on the Brits in Faro (Fitzy/Matt Short), but there has been no significant "weekend" action and week days are just not feasible. It is about an 8 hour drive each way and would only be justified if I could stay for a couple of days.

I have also noticed that in late March through early April, there are three 10ks in Villajoysa (near Alicante). As with Murcia, this is about 45 minutes from me, but sadly, if work goes to plan, Bob in Spain will actually be "Bob in Brazil" for much of that three weeks. So if I am reporting from these tournaments, it means I am out of work and broke wink Hmmm, maybe I will have to give this sports journalism a go then !!

-- Edited by Bob in Spain on Friday 22nd of February 2013 08:13:51 AM

murray_2k9 · Challenger qualifying

Again, great read and thanks for not just bothering to inform us of the result but going the extra mile and chatting to coaches etc. Please keep it up!

Reeltime · Satellite level

Thanks from me as well, Bob.

Re. the lack of challengers. Hell, it's not that long since we even had a clay-court challenger. It's now a 10k.....

Bob in Spain · Tennis legend

korriban wrote:
Bob. There's definitely considerable journalistic talent involved in your writing! It was balanced, interesting, and even had that "page turner" feel. The story behind the story.
Kyle's coach will be delighted with your summary, because if he can utter just 4 words and have an almost instantaneous positive impact on a match, that's extraordinarily impressive. Of course it does help to have Britain's most talented male tennis teenager in your corner, who listened, understood, committed and had the ability to execute the plan.
I don't know if you had the chance to watch Senor Carreno-Busta, who won his 17th match in a row (and his 24th out of 25 this year including qualies) in demolishing the 291 ranked seed yesterday! I hope he wins this tournament now, then decides to take a rest after winning all 3 Spanish tournaments (and Turkey before that, would 4 in a row), facilitating Kyle's passage into the Cartagena MD and giving the rest if the field a chance!

Unfortunately I didn't get to see "Buster" but he did crop up in conversation with Kyle on the first day. I had been unaware of the run that he had been on but Kyle was definitely aware and we had noted that he was in the other half of the draw this week.

Last I looked, Kyle was up to 3rd Alternate for Cartagena as I think he was this week for Murcia and that was enough to get him into the MD here. So I am hopeful he will get the MD even though it is borderline.

Big problem with Cartagena is that the facilities are "at the other end of the spectrum" from Murcia. The main Murcia court can house 200+ spectators without a problem and more importantly there is easy access to the other courts. If you use the following link, one of the pictures in slide show at the top of the homepage has a good overhead and you have a clear view main court with the blue seating. This was the court Kyle played on yesterday.

http://www.murciaclubdetenis.es/

In Cartagena, there are only three courts and they are all side by side. The main court has a few wooden benches alongside it, but if you want to see the other courts, all you can do is look over the main court with a pair of binoculars!! Viewing for courts 2 & 3 is non existent.

-- Edited by Bob in Spain on Saturday 23rd of February 2013 12:02:34 PM

korriban · Challenger level

Bob. There's definitely considerable journalistic talent involved in your writing! It was balanced, interesting, and even had that "page turner" feel. The story behind the story.

Kyle's coach will be delighted with your summary, because if he can utter just 4 words and have an almost instantaneous positive impact on a match, that's extraordinarily impressive. Of course it does help to have Britain's most talented male tennis teenager in your corner, who listened, understood, committed and had the ability to execute the plan.

I don't know if you had the chance to watch Senor Carreno-Busta, who won his 17th match in a row (and his 24th out of 25 this year including qualies) in demolishing the 291 ranked seed yesterday! I hope he wins this tournament now, then decides to take a rest after winning all 3 Spanish tournaments (and Turkey before that, would 4 in a row), facilitating Kyle's passage into the Cartagena MD and giving the rest if the field a chance!

Bob in Spain · Tennis legend

Have a laugh time !!

I have just been on the Murcia Tennis Club website blogs and as always, they focus almost exclusively on the Spanish players. There are a couple of pictures of Kyle, and this is what they have to say about him.

We also want to highlight the participation of one of the most promising young players on the international circuit, in the shape of Kyte Edmun who at just 16 years of age, is the youngest player on the ATP tour.

Spot the errors !!

indiana · Tennis legend

As well as Kyle has generally been playing, I would have one concern about his three main draw losses this year. All went to 3 sets, but the final sets were lost 6-1, 6-1 and 6-0.

The second USA loss was from 6-2 5-2 up to a 6-2 5-7 1-6 loss.

Kyle's coach described to Bob that big turnaround as a typical monentum shift that can happen. Now in Bob's fine report on this latest loss, the summary of that 6-0 final set is headed "MOMENTUM".

Now I accept that his opponent yesterday was playing well, and indeed also had a final set bagel against his R1 opponent.

But this is something that would often be noted in these parts, and is perhaps maybe something not just again to be looked on as a "typical momentum shift", but be thought about a bit further.

Both coach and player seem to be pretty professional so I have no really big longterm concerns. I just thought it worthy of comment.

steven · Tennis legend

Bob in Spain wrote:
Steven - thanks for the tweet. If I was annoyed about tweeting a link, it would be a bit late now LOL. But no, its cool - thanks. I notice you "named" Kyle in the tweet so he will get a direct link and may have already visited here to read the report. Hope I haven't said anything to upset him (or his coach) !!

If I thought you'd done that, I would have been much more careful I don't think you said anything that could be objected to.

In fact, the main reason for @ mentioning is not to get the player to read it but because it is the most effective way to highlight tweets to followers who may only be interested in one or two players, such as player relatives, a lot of whom follow. I try to make it as easy as possible for followers to skim through and find tweets they're interested in, especially when I'm tweeting a lot at once. It's also easier in some cases (e.g. when tweeting from my phone) to type @ and pick the name than it is to write out the full name.

The more well-known players (and Kyle is certainly moving into that category, I would say) probably get loads of @ mentions every day and ignore most of them! Having said that, if some of those toiling on the Futures circuit who aren't so well known enjoy the fact that a good win has been noticed by someone outside their immediate family and friends (and hence by those reading the tweet as well), that can only be a positive thing.

If I remember right, Beechy does follow, so he may have been curious enough to click through, in which case I imagine he might have enjoyed your implication that he can help create magic with just four simple words.

korriban · Challenger level

Indy. It's not normally like me to miss an opportunity for a melodramatic conspiracy theory (and I did, foolishly, call out that bizarre US turnaround match - it was extreme by any standards, but my comments were ill-judged), but like you I think this "trend" is nothing to be overly concerned about. Just the opposite.

He's very young, so his opponents will often be physically stronger and have more endurance; he is building up his matchplay experience against seasoned campaigners, which will ultimately serve him well in those clutch moments; and he probably doesn't yet have a power serve which gives him enough free points at high pressure moments to win whilst playing badly or nervously.

Actually, the fact that he has only lost this year against much higher ranked players (I think), and even then only in 3 tough sets, indicates he's already competitive at a much higher level than his ranking. I'm very impressed. It's just a shame his tournament schedule has required him to go through qualifying rounds or up against very tough, highly ranked fields, or in some cases, both. With other tournaments available, you could easily have seen him pick up 20-30 points in 4 tournaments, rather than just 3. No disrespect to Ed Corrie, and of course clay courts are different from hard courts, but I'd argue that the competition was significantly tougher in the early US Futures series than in the UK Futures series......and Spain looks like a similarly tough nut to crack.

steven · Tennis legend

korriban wrote:
No disrespect to Ed Corrie, and of course clay courts are different from hard courts, but I'd argue that the competition was significantly tougher in the early US Futures series than in the UK Futures series......and Spain looks like a similarly tough nut to crack.

Having played an lot of matches in US Futures with huge qualifying draws early last year for relatively little reward in the first quarter of last year, I doubt Ed would disagree with that! It's quite possible that at that stage he wanted the tough matches and this year his priority is points, and if so, fair enough.

Jan · Hall of fame

Just catching up after some busy days.

I'll add my thanks to Bob too - great report!