Week 15 - USA F9 ($15,000) - Oklahoma City (Hard)

paulisi · Tennis legend

RE: Week 15 - USA F9 ($15,000) - Oklahoma City (Hard)

steven · Tennis legend

3-5*

de Voest winning 93% when he gets his 1st serve in, 50% on 2nd

Boggo also doing well on 1st serve (80%+) but only winning 12% on 2nd serve

paulisi · Tennis legend

RDV won first set 6-3

paulisi · Tennis legend

Alex a double break down in second set 0-3*

steven · Tennis legend

Anyone fancy a punt on Alex at 41.00?

steven · Tennis legend

The odds went out to 67.00 as de Voest went 30-15 up on serve but have now come in to 29.00 as Alex gets a break point.

But the South African ends up holding - 3-6 *0-4 (67.00 again)

steven · Tennis legend

19.00 now as after another close game, the Bogster does manage to get one of the breaks back

3-6 2-4*

paulisi · Tennis legend

RDV serving for the match at 5-2

steven · Tennis legend

D'oh ... all that work just to get broken again

MP now for RdV ...

steven · Tennis legend

FINAL: (4) Alex Bogdanovic WR 301 lost to (2) Rik de Voest (RSA) WR 224 (CH 110 in 2006) by 3 & 2

indiana · Tennis legend

Pity, but RDV is rather good for a futures player !

Looks like Boggo could be in the mix for GB no 2 in a couple of weeks with all the points James and Jamie will be dropping, if not the ranking level we would like to see a battle for GB no 2.

Spectator · All-time great

Indeed, he could. (Long sigh, taken on behalf of the membership of this board, who often seem to want more for him than he - thus far - seems to want for himself)

-- Edited by Spectator on Monday 15th of April 2013 02:59:27 PM

RJA · Hall of fame

Count Zero wrote:
To clarfiy if offered Alex would of course take the WC. The financial aspect (and the opportunity a GS WC affords) is just too huge to turn something like that down, regardless of the negative press.

Well of course, no way is anyone going to turn one down. It might however be much better for Alex to come through qualifying as being there on merit would probably take a huge amount of pressure off him. In any case unless he gets up to 250 it is a moot point.

-- Edited by RJA on Monday 15th of April 2013 04:50:07 PM

RJA · Hall of fame

Can you imagine the bind that the LTA would be in if we don't have any top 250 players (aside from Murray) prior to Wimbledon. No way could they not offer any Brits a wild card but it would be a PR disaster if none of the players met the LTA's own criteria. Sure they could argue the case for Ward and Evo based their Davis cup exploits, they could easily justify one for Edmund based on age and achievements thus far, you could make a case for Golding if he finds some form and you could even argue that Baker needs recognising for the sacrifices he made to be on the Davis Cup squad. All in all though it would look very bad.

-- Edited by RJA on Monday 15th of April 2013 05:40:31 PM

korriban · Challenger level

I hadn't thought of it like that, but you're right. The LTA having not having a single player inside 250 (it could happen after all) would force them to openly and rather obviously (not to mention embarrassingly) ignore/abandon their own rules, unless they wanted to cut off their own nose to spite their face, and not award any men's WCs to GB players at all.

Surely common sense will prevail, even if it means a public "about face". Common sense DID prevail in the Davis Cup (where a subjective "likelihood of winning" criterion trumped more objective ranking, work ethic and discipline criteria), and a player ranked ~325 was picked, played superbly and won, whereas a player ranked well inside 250 was discarded because it was felt he couldn't win. Surely the fact that this decision was (correctly) made by the LTA themselves demonstrates an admission that rankings alone are clearly NOT the be-all and end-all for selecting teams, WCs, etc......

I think if they continue to talk up this 250 ranking criterion for MDWCs post-DC it would just look plain silly!!!! I think it will be conveniently "forgotten". They can blame Draper now......noone would care

-- Edited by korriban on Monday 15th of April 2013 05:32:36 PM