Jonny's ranked 685 on the acceptance lists.
If he had gone to the 25k in Australia, he'd be comfortably in the main draw.
Instead, he's in the 15k in Thailand - and only in qualis.
Yes indeed very expensive indeed, Thailand is probably about 3 or 4 times cheaper so makes sense to avoid Australia for ITFs, even winning a 25k would probably struggle to break even. Thailand is probably after Egypt the cheapest and probably would be overall when you take away the flight cost.
