Week 11 - Challenger ($50,000+H) - Drummondville, Canada (hard)

paulisi · Tennis legend

RE: Week 11 - Challenger ($50,000+H) - Drummondville, Canada (hard)

DF · Tennis legend

Into a TB

DF · Tennis legend

Liam takes the first set.

Madadman · Masters Series Champion

First set Liam 7-6(5)

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Great job there, Liam, to get that TB done. Well played.

But he's such a long way back, a lot of the time - it makes it hard.

paulisi · Tennis legend

It's all going wrong.
Mertens has cut out the errors and Liam is making lots.

paulisi · Tennis legend

Liam's first serve percentage has dropped and getting very few cheap points on serve now.

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

L32: (LL) Ed Corrie WR 532 vs (ALT) Deiton Baughmann (USA) WR 403 (CH = 341 last October) - fourth match on Court central tomorrow. Mitchell Krueger, who took out the second seed, Nguyen, in three, lies in wait in the second round

L32: (6) Yannick Mertens (BEL) WR 198 by defeated Liam Broady WR 289 by 6-7(5) 6-1 6-4

L32: (4) Daniel Evans WR 157 defeated Matthew Barton (AUS) WR 241 by 1-6 6-2 6-3

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

It was a good effort from Liam, especially compared to some of his other recent matches. But he was way too far back, it was too easy for Mertens to force the error from him.

-- Edited by Coup Droit on Tuesday 15th of March 2016 08:58:07 AM

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

Stircrazy wrote:
In the doubles:
R1: Dan Evans & Lloyd Glasspool CR 1406 (1042+364) vs (WC) Jack Mingjie Lin & Joshua Peck CR 2955 (1205+1750)
R1: Deiton Baughmann & Eric Quigley (USA/USA) CR 586 (365+221) vs Matthew Barton (AUS) & Dan Smethurst CR 1062 (732+330)
R1: Luke Bambridge & Liam Broady CR 703 (302+401) vs Daniel Nguyen & Matt Seeberger (USA/USA) CR 702 (555+157)

-- Edited by Stircrazy on Monday 14th of March 2016 10:56:05 AM

Hot on the heels of Darren's withdrawal for personal reasons comes Dan S's through illness: he & Barton were replaced by Gooch & Shane, who lost. I sincerely hope it's nowt serious.

Spectator · All-time great

Well, that at least makes sense of the loss to Winston Lin, which was a little mystifying otherwise. Likewise hope that it's nothing serious and soon mended. And really sorry it's affected the chances of financial gain this week.

RJA · Hall of fame

Having seen the final set of Smethurst v Lin I am glad to see that Dan has withdrawn through illness because otherwise it was match that should have been attracting the attention of the Tennis Integrity Unit.

A more cynical person than me might suspect that he only became ill after finding out that the match was streamed and that it still should be attracting the attention of the Tennis Integrity Unit.

-- Edited by RJA on Tuesday 15th of March 2016 01:18:11 PM

Spectator · All-time great

I would guess that players are aware of the streaming arrangements on all courts before they play. But given that to the best of my knowledge nothing Mr Smethurst has ever said or done has suggested that he is a person of compromised integrity, I'd also prefer to assume that that's irrelevant.

Speaking of illness, Mr Corrie's next opponent is another wunderkind and is just coming back from glandular fever - hence probably underranked.

RJA · Hall of fame

Spectator wrote:
I would guess that players are aware of the streaming arrangements on all courts before they play. But given that to the best of my knowledge nothing Mr Smethurst has ever said or done has suggested that he is a person of compromised integrity, I'd also prefer to assume that that's irrelevant.

Prior to yesterday I would have completely agreed, it's just that having watched that set I can no longer say so with any confidence. He simply made no effort at all to win the set and I am not even sure that the illness line makes that much sense. What is the point of fighting back to win the second set only to give up from the first game of the third?

I am certainly not making accusations but I find it very disturbing.

steven · Tennis legend

RJA wrote:
Spectator wrote:
I would guess that players are aware of the streaming arrangements on all courts before they play. But given that to the best of my knowledge nothing Mr Smethurst has ever said or done has suggested that he is a person of compromised integrity, I'd also prefer to assume that that's irrelevant.
Prior to yesterday I would have completely agreed, it's just that having watched that set I can no longer say so with any confidence. He simply made no effort at all to win the set and I am not even sure that the illness line makes that much sense. What is the point of fighting back to win the second set only to give up from the first game of the third?
I am certainly not making accusations but I find it very disturbing.

If you're ill and haven't got much energy, tanking the end of the 1st set so as to conserve energy for the 2nd, managing to get through the 2nd, maybe partly through an adrenaline high, then coming down from that high, feeling groggy at the start of the 3rd and realising that you can't win seems fairly plausible to me. You could ask why he didn't retire early in the 3rd in that case but looking at ITF, he has only retired from singles matches 7 times in nearly 10 years, so maybe he doesn't feel it's the honourable thing to do unless he absolutely has to because it's a sudden injury or he's throwing up on court, for example. In saying that, I'm assuming one retirement or fewer per year is well below average (unless you're Fed or Muzz!), though I haven't checked.

I realise that the way that match went might have made any of us suspicious if we were watching a player we were already suspicious of, but there can be so many reasons for matches going up and down like this that I'm always inclined to give players the benefit of any doubt unless any real evidence is produced. I have good and bad days, months, years (and even parts of days) too - I wouldn't want ups and downs like that to be taken as prima facie evidence that something sinister was going on! smile

I should add that obviously I accept that you weren't making accusations and that there has been a lot in the tennis news recently to make tennis fans err on the suspicious side.