Week 28 - Challenger ($75,000) - National Bank Challenger, Winnipeg, Canada (hard)

Madadman · Masters Series Champion

Week 28 - Challenger ($75,000) - National Bank Challenger, Winnipeg, Canada (hard)

Oakland2002 · All-time great

Congratulations to them both. You can only beat what is front of you and they have done that quite resoundingly.

wolf · Tennis legend

From Luke's instagram, it does indeed look as if these two will team up from now. Interesting turn of events.

bamlukebridgeFirst challenger title in Winnipeg great start to a great partnership #duke #lavid @ohare90. Also Taking out @mhilts1's doubles career high this Monday #goalachieved #volleygame @mizunoeurope

Spectator · All-time great

That's wonderful. Super win. Super to get that first challenger. Super to have a steady partner - who seems a really decent sort - who's also very good and at a high ranking. I hope this is indeed the beginning of a great partnership.

Jaggy1876 · Grand Slam Champion

How is this partnership going to work though? I assume Luke will be playing some futures to get his ranking back up, or is the plan to go through qualies at challengers. He still shouldn't give up on his own game, still has a top 100 potential in there somewhere.

indiana · Tennis legend

Jaggy1876 wrote:
How is this partnership going to work though? I assume Luke will be playing some futures to get his ranking back up, or is the plan to go through qualies at challengers. He still shouldn't give up on his own game, still has a top 100 potential in there somewhere.

It's extremely well hidden !

But yes be interesting to see how this works. I imagine it will be challenger qualifying for the foreseeable combining both singles and doubles.

Also very interesting re Luke/David/Joe. Though much of the background and future can only be speculated about.

Madadman · Masters Series Champion

Thing is at 22 he has one futures title to his name. If he drops to play futures and isn't regularly making finals(singles) then he's going to struggle money wise to support himself to stay on the tour. Although I do not know what support he gets finance wise.
Playing on the challenger and doing well at least semi-regularly in the doubles should help support himself. Obviously doing well in the doubles might be detrimental to his singles as he wont be able to enter Qualifying for the following week.

I've only seen little of Luke play. From what I've seen top 100 looks a long way off.

Jaggy1876 · Grand Slam Champion

I remember a few years back seeing Luke, Liam and Kyle within the same week and thinking Luke looked the one to watch. I suppose there as so many other factors involved as we've seen with the likes of Oli Golding, George Morgan and Josh Ward Hibbert.

Oakland2002 · All-time great

Luke is still there and appears very committed to making it, I think playing challengers qualifying for his singles and being competitive in doubles at this level is a very sensible way forward particularly if the money side is working out. He is only going to get better and better at doubles by playing it regularly.

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

Stircrazy wrote:
And we have two more doubles s this week:
Final: (1) Luke Bambridge & David O'Hare (IRL) CR 312 (173+139) defeated Yusuke Takahashi & Renta Tokuda (JPN/JPN) CR 2180 (979+1201) by 2 & 2
Dominant or what? And, dare I say it, rather more rewarding than their Futures win in Wichita last week: $2,325 & 80 ranking points apiece.

On the strength of that win (+ presumably Wichita), Luke has risen 27 places in today's rankings to a CH of 146 & David four places to 135.