Inevitable!!!!!

Ash broken immediately and loses 5-7 third set. All 5 BPs offered by Ash were converted immediately by the Belgian. Ash had 19 BPs himself, but couldn't convert more than 3.

What a bizarre match!

Is this the tennis equivalent of missing an open goal, or being brilliant tee to green, but unable to putt - can't defend your own BPs offered, can't convert the ones you create.................

So in summary, there were 24 "clutch" points in the match, i.e. BP situations. Ash won 3, the opponent won 21, including all 5 on Ash's serve!!!!! Wow!!

Just looked up this Yannick Vandenbulcke who, as expected has done absolutely nothing of note in Futures or Challangers all year......a few Futures QFs, but nothing more..............

.....except for 1 week in Israel where he

1. Came through 3 rounds of qualifying.

2. Then beat Mathias Bourge #456 (FRA), Alexandre Folie #499 (BEL), Axel Michon #286 (FRA), Roman Jebavy #310 (CZE) and Claudio Grassi #458 (ITA) to win the tournament......that's a seriously tough looking route to a $10k win.

So I presume he's a streaky, high risk player, who goes for broke on serve and return......and on his day can beat allcomers, but as with all such players, rarely do they ever actually win a tournament unless they have a hot streak.

In fact his previous $10k tournament win was 4 years previously where he beat J-L Struff in straight sets and Dan Smethurst in the final in straight sets, including a second set bagel!

Touch of the Laura Robson's perhaps? [Puts hard hat on.....]

RJA wrote:

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korriban wrote:

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So I presume he's a streaky, high risk player, who goes for broke on serve and return......and on his day can beat allcomers, but as with all such players, rarely do they ever actually win a tournament unless they have a hot streak.

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That wasn't the impression I got when I watched Evans beat him in the second round at Bath earlier in the year but obviously that was only one match.

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 RJA. I was just making an educated (or perhaps uneducated) assessment...........The high ace and even higher DF count; the 2 return games won to love; the large #s of BPs offered yet almost always saved; and the very high BP conversion rate - all seemed to fit a high risk approach.......alternative interpretation could that it was just one of those days!!!

indiana wrote:

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I think it may just have been "one of these days".

Ashley's having a great year. On to his next tournament..

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Indeed. In fact, I make that the first time Ashley has failed to reach the round he was seeded/ranked to reach since he lost to Robert Carter in Wirral qualifying at the start of February! He had reached or gone further than he was seeded/ranked to in his last 11 tournaments before this one (though the first of those 11 was a R1 loss to higher-ranked Evo)