I found myself wondering if Alex playing qualies here was some kind of weirdly appropriate celebration of the 5-year anniversary of his first Futures final in Balaguer in May 2008, which he reached as an unranked qualifier. Turns out his day playing qualies in Düsseldorf last Saturday was the actual 5-year anniversary of the Final.

Brought to you courtesy of "Useless facts R me ..."

QR2: (q1) Alexander Ward WR 439 beat Alberto Remero Di Avila Senise (ESP) UNR : 6-2, 6-1

FQR: (q1) Alexander Ward WR 439 v Carlos Lopez Villa (ESP) UNR

L32: (6) Oliver Golding WR 584 v (Q) Adria Mas Mascolo (ESP) WR 1383
L32: (Q) Alexander Ward WR 439 v Richard Becker (GER) WR 1206

And in the doubles

R1: (2) Oliver Golding / Alexander Ward WR 1071 v David Catala Juan / Miquel Semmler (ESP/ESP) UNR

Catala Juan and Semmler have a combined age of just over 31. The former only turned 15 a month ago, while the the latter turned 16 around 3 weeks ago.

-- Edited by RJA on Monday 27th of May 2013 02:05:01 PM

Alex would be 4th seed in the main draw had they not made the draw before qualifying finished.

paulisi wrote:

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Glad that Alex and Oli are in opposite sides of the draw.

Alex would have been seeded either 2 or 3 if the qualifying had been done before the draw was made. Decent draws to start with.

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You had me wondering if I'd made a mistake there, but I'm sure he'd have been seeded 4 - 3rd seed Giustino was ranked 401 last week, Alex 439 and 4th seed Pérez Sanz 466.

Ah ok, that makes sense if you were looking at ITF - I just took them off the drawsheet on the ATP site, where the rankings shown correspond to the ones used for seeding, which makes it much easier.

Doesn't really matter anyway - either way, he is ranked to reach the QFs even if he isn't seeded to do so.

Good point Paulisi. Despite taking Becker to deuce in that last game (now *4-4) Alex has won only 6 points on the Becker serve in 9 games and 3 of those have been double faults !!

And the crowd are shouting, "Are you Boris in disguise ?????"

-- Edited by Bob in Spain on Tuesday 28th of May 2013 12:00:09 PM