Week 3 - Australian Open (men's)

steven · Tennis legend

Week 3 - Australian Open (men's)

Montana Doug · Futures qualifying

Rough draw.....A seed and I wanted a big name as James does so well on the big stage, but not sure Verdasco still demands a show court.

freerider · Futures level

I think james will run him close. If he can sneak a win Rd 2 lools winnable and then have a pop at the djoker

indiana · Tennis legend

Not bad at all, I'd say.

As an opportunity to reach the last 32, you couldn't ask for much better than Verdasco then Soeda or a qualifier. Yes, purely focussing on winning one match, you'ed have these round the other way, but James seems in a good place just now so I'm looking more at the first two rounds combination.

And if he does get to R3, when life could be expected to just probably get a bit too difficult, what a potential experience against Djokovic.

emma · Strong Club Player

yes, I think its quite a good draw and I think James will be up for it. Certainly a lot better draw than Del Potro - he may wish he hadn't come back just yet.

Good luck to James and hope there's a good crowd for you. You can win !!!

-- Edited by emmas on Friday 16th of January 2015 08:34:41 PM

Bob in Spain · Tennis legend

Absolutely delighted to be adding Kyle's name to this thread. He will be playing Steve Johnson in R1

goldenboy · Club Coach

Not an easy draw there for kyle, Johnson's a solid player in the up, but absolutely fantastic he's qualified for the main draw to start with!

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

Many congratulations to Kyle on qualifying. biggrin

Recap:

L128: (1) Novak Djokovic (SRB) WR 1 vs (Q) Aljaz Bedene (SLO/GBR) WR 116 (CH = 71 in February 2013) (no head-to-head) bleh
L128: James Ward WR 102 (CH = 101 last week) vs (31) Fernando Verdasco ESP WR 33 (CH = 7 in 2009) (head-to-head: 0-1)
L128: (Q) Kyle Edmund WR 192 (CH = 191 last week) vs Steve Johnson (USA) WR 39 (CH = 37 last November) (no head-to-head) bleh

GBJ · Club Coach

Pleased to see Mr Bedene get through. Hoping the BBC cover that one. Will be really interesting to see how he fares against Nole.

Anyone else notice his extremely unusual service stats for fqr? Woeful first serve percentage of 40 but I guess he must have really gone foe the first serves as of the 22 he got in he won 21 - 10 with aces! I guess since he was winning 60+% behind second serve he might as well have tried something extra with the first. Anyone know if he usually makes few first serves but wins a lot of them? I'm sure even if he does this is quite exceptional!

Spectator · All-time great

I'm glad it's Mr Bedene v Mr Djokovic. Of the potential qualifiers, Mr Bedene was one of five or six for whom this could be a really useful match (suspect that he and Mr Melzer were two of the names that Mr Djokovic would have rather wound up somewhere else). Far, far better for him to be there than for someone who really doesn't stand a chance. He has nothing to lose and can only gain experience. As for the rest, well, wait and see.

GBJ · Club Coach

We'll put Spectator

huntley93 · Strong Club Player

been a pretty good start to the year already hasn't it! 2 main tour titles already and 3 players in the main draw of a grand slam by right!
interesting to see such a massive turnaround in liam game in the last 18 month where he was regularly loosing first round in futures to now almost qualifying for grand slams.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

This is a re-post of part of one that I put in the Q thread - just realised (wonderfully!) that it should go in the main one !

Good luck to Kyle in the main draw. I'm not sure I've ever really seen Steve Johnson play a whole match - his track record these last six months is pretty poor. Is he a tall, fast-serving, hard court American style player? Much for Kyle to be worried about?

Jaffa · Challenger level

CD - Johnson is a bit like Kyle really, hard court specialist, got a big serve and forehand, likes to attack as well and his results are fairly consistent as can be viewed here:

www.tennisabstract.com/cgi-bin/player.cgi

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Jaffa wrote:
CD - Johnson is a bit like Kyle really, hard court specialist, got a big serve and forehand, likes to attack as well and his results are fairly consistent as can be viewed here:

www.tennisabstract.com/cgi-bin/player.cgi

Brilliant - cheers, Jaffa. smile

Now, any scoop on Bhambri ??? For the Andy thread ???