Oli will have a certain sense of déjà vu by the time he plays his singles match:
R1: Daniele Chiurulli & Lorenzo Santini (ITA/ITA) UNR vs Oli Golding & William Herbert (who he? ATP says he's 35 & "inactive"!) UNR
The match is due to be played today.
I assume he is this William Herbert http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/william-herbert/47/426/567, a tennis coach & physio who hit a junior career high of 320 in 1996 and whose last pro match (he never got an ATP ranking) was at Edinburgh Futures 14 years ago when he lost to a familiar name in the FQR (Iain Bates, now head of women's tennis at the LTA) before getting into the main draw as a lucky loser and losing in R1 in both singles and doubles.
I guess Oli wants court time, Mr Herbert is out there coaching or physio-ing, there was a space in the doubles draw and they decided to give it a go!
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Oli will have a certain sense of déjà vu by the time he plays his singles match:
R1: Daniele Chiurulli & Lorenzo Santini (ITA/ITA) UNR vs Oli Golding & William Herbert (who he? ATP says he's 35 & "inactive"!) UNR
The match is due to be played today.
I assume he is this William Herbert http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/william-herbert/47/426/567, a tennis coach & physio who hit a junior career high of 320 in 1996 and whose last pro match (he never got an ATP ranking) was at Edinburgh Futures 14 years ago when he lost to a familiar name in the FQR (Iain Bates, now head of women's tennis at the LTA) before getting into the main draw as a lucky loser and losing in R1 in both singles and doubles.
I guess Oli wants court time, Mr Herbert is out there coaching or physio-ing, there was a space in the doubles draw and they decided to give it a go!
So does this mean that Mr Herbert, having not achieved a ranking when he was playing, will now have a ranking after all! Or, it being doubles, does he need to win one more match? Would be rather nice if he got a ranking now.
Brilliant. Big step up in the QF. If Oli is near his best it is winnable but I fear hes not quite there yet.
Based on his year to date level, with regret, I'd be very surprised if he came even close to winning this match, although there looks to have been steady improvement.
He was lucky enough to have had a week's training with Andy (and Lendl I presume) over the winter, and he's fortunate enough to be able to travel with a 1-on-1 personal coach. He's now had a decent number of matches under his belt, post-February, in 4 different countries. The wins are starting to come, but not yet against decent opposition, which is disappointing 2 months on. Maybe he'll change this tomorrow: I hope he does.
A win tomorrow would really kick start his season especially with some big points to come off in the next few weeks. On current form it would be difficult, but you never know.