Dan up to #296 on Live Rankings, lot of Tennis to be played this week, but only 3 players who could overhaul him with a single win, so got to be good chance hell be back inside Top 300 this week. Another win would secure it.
AMMB posters judgement that Harris was the Q draw to avoid was borne out by him being the only one to beat a Qualifier. Gojo, Aragone & Evo all being Qualifier/ 1st Rd winners.
I think tomorrow's match against Fabbiano will be a good test. I saw Dan beat Fabniano comfortably at Surbiton, but grass will always favour Dan. TF will have nowhere near the weight of shot of EE, but TF will give only a fraction of the freebies that Ernesto gave. Dan will have to construct his his points with more alacrity - just trading ground shots with Fabbiano would leave TF is the most likely winner by far. Dan has the game to beat Fabbiano, I am convinced of that, but can he execute?
Fabbiano is just tiny, shorter than even Mark Hilton! Dan is so much taller! Other posters have also remarked upon the unreliability of the height stat on the ATP site, which I had taken as gospel. It seems that small man syndrome exists in tennis as much as anywhere. Maybe they like to stand on tippy toes like Nic Sarkozy when the measure themselves...
I mentioned in a previous post that Dan's serve wasn't great against Escobedo. I've just checked the stats: 6DFs in 10 service games and 1st serve percentage of just 43%. Not great, but it shows how much room for improvement there is. A positive I've not mentioned is the two bh drop shots up the line that he hit when Ernesto was running round his backhand. It is a tactic he should have used more, on both occasions Ernesto was a mile away from getting to them. Dan didn't hit any other drop shots in the whole match.
Well, Dan did win in two sets a couple of months ago, and I can't remember if it was the slice as such that was the main issue but he certainly deserved to win (although it was close, 6-4 7-5)
I'd like to know the story about what happened between Luke and Jonny and why they are no longer playing together... At the beginning of the year Luke was all about how much he wanted to play with Jonny and they did seem a compatible combination and made good progress together...