The late withdrawals mean that Dino gets a seeding, unless, of course, some higher ranked players get wild cards. I think he'll be the 7th seed as things stand, so he's probably safe.



 Since Evo is (presumably) done for the season, James has an unexpected chance of ending the year as the British number 2. Evo is 39 "race" points ahead, so James will need a maximum of 6 wins to bridge the gap. 

-- Edited by Salmon on Friday 1st of November 2013 02:58:33 PM

The rule re special exempts starts:

"A player is eligible to receive a special exempt into the singles main draw of the following week's tournament (...) if he is unable to compete in that qualifying competition because he is still competing on the date the qualifying competition begins in another qualified event, and his current ranking on as of the date of the entry deadline would not have otherwise qualified him as a direct acceptance on the original acceptance list if he had entered."

So you can't get a special exempt if you would have got into the main draw direct but didn't bother to enter the tournament, but you can if you would have had to sign in for qualifying. Given that there isn't an official qualifying entry list for Challengers (any guesses we make about who might play qualifying are based on the main draw alternates list), that seems fair enough - if he hadn't still been playing in Traralgon, there would have been nothing to stop him flying to Korea and signing in.

As things have turned out, he may be wishing he was allowed to ask Klahn to play their Yeongwon R1 match in Australia to save himself the 10000+ mile round trip if Klahn remains in good form!

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Looks like all the QR1 matches involving Brits have now been cancelled for the day, which could mean having to play twice tomorrow, with QR2s against opponents who have already got part or all of their QR1 matches out of the way today.

Edit: on second thoughts, it's not too bad - of the relevant QR1 matches, only the one that will decide the opponent for the winner of Ashley's match manage to get started today and they only played one set.

-- Edited by steven on Saturday 2nd of November 2013 08:16:09 AM

Qualifying has been delayed by rain.

Brydan has got a special exempt place here but having just lost to Klahn in the Traralgon semis ... well, you couldn't make it up:

L32: (SE) Brydan Klein WR 402 v (4) Bradley Klahn (USA) WR 123 (= CH) - H2H 0-1 (today)
L32: (6) James Ward WR 166 v Taro Daniel (JPN) WR 249 (CH 244 in May)

Does suggest something a bit awry to be a late withdrawal from a challenger in South Korea after being out in Asia for just one week, for another challenger in South Korea.

Hopefully nothing too serious...

Yes, I agree, Indy.

Although the LTA have a heap of difficult stuff to address if they really want to improve GB tennis, in terms of immediate things this seems a very well-targeted quick change, given there are currently so many players knocking on the door of Challenger qualies (and of course this payment - and the GBP 500 for qualifying and subsequent payments - is not capped out).
It does seem to send the right message and fill a rather unhelpful gap that the ATP have left.

-- Edited by Coup Droit on Sunday 3rd of November 2013 08:56:45 AM

QR1: (q6) Ashley Hewitt WR 387 lost to Marcus Daniell (NZL) WR 557 (=CH) by 4 & 5 
QR1: (q4) Alex Ward WR 345 beat (wc) Seong Hyeon Im (KOR) UNR (CH 1139 in 2011) by 5 & 2 
QR1: (q8) Richard Gabb WR 414 beat Sergey Betov (BLR) WR 466 (CH 340 in 2011) by 5 & 4 

QR2: (q4) Alex Ward WR 345 v Lee Seung-Jae (KOR) WR 1411 (CH 1148 in 2009)
QR2: (q8) Richard Gabb WR 414 v Artem Sitak (NZL) WR 455 (CH 299 in 2008)

Richard lost 2 & 5 to RussKiwi Sitak in Phnom Penh last year.

The winners of these two matches (which are likely to start between about 6-7 am UK time) will meet in the FQR.

Alex has won 6-1 6-1 in Q2 and Richard has won the first set 6-0. Going well so far...