Hopefully Matt Smith is ok, he pulled something in his right knee which sounds quite serious.
Lee, Auckland and Parmar's losses were pretty much expected, Saulnier and Gimelstob are class players and both have been/are ranked in the top 100. Hopefully James benefitted from the experience. Alexander Peya is ranked well below Arvind but Peya has beaten him in straight sets before.
Apart from Boggo, the best performance was probably Josh Goodall who took a set off a player ranked around 250 places higher. Goodall's had some great wins lately and thoroughly deserved his wildcard, it was a shame he didn't get a kinder draw.
I was disappointed with Jamie Baker and Richard Bloomfield, I did expect both of them to win. Richard is ranked well above his opponent and with his big serve on indoor courts, I thought he'd win in straights. Jamie's opponent has been playing on clay for the last 3 weeks but then again Jamie isn't at his best on indoor courts. Like Andy Murray, his game is better suited to slower surfaces.
Boggo's win was excellent considering that he would have had virtually no time to readjust to the faster indoor courts and little time to recover from jetlag. Lugassy is at a career high ranking of 274. He will be firm favourite against 19 year old Stakhovsky from the Ukraine who is ranked 252 and has won just 2 matches so far in 2006. They've played once before, in rd2 of the 2005 Manchester Challenger on grass. Boggo won comfortably 6-4, 6-2.
Hopefully Alex's eye will be ok, where did you read that Count Zero ? How did he injure it ?
Boggo says that Stakhovsky's main weapon is a big serve, his weakness is that his groundstrokes can be very erratic.
Count Zero wrote: i didnt read it, was told by someone that was there, i dont know how he hurt it, maybe a ball hit him?
Ow, sounds painful !
Regarding Col Fleming's rd1 loss in qualies to Ed Corrie, Colin says that he's very short of match practise. Also, about a week ago he suffered the loss of a close relative and the funeral was the day after the DC tie so that may have been another reason.
Colin says that he's now not going to Lanzarote, he's taking a week off to practise. He's not playing the 3 futures events in Greece either now, he's heading to Bournemouth and Edinburgh instead for the clay-court futures.
We have several British pairs in the doubles in Cardiff:
Fleming and Corrie play the no 1 seeds today - Peya and Petzschner.
Auckland and Bloomfield have paired up and were really pushed hard in rd1 by Chris Eaton and Andy Kennaugh - 6-1, 3-6, 10-6. They play 3rd seeds Dell'Acqua and Vico in quarters.
Lee and Marray are the 2nd seeds and in the quarters against some Swedes - Prpic and Rehnquist.
great win, good to see alex pull through in 3 sets too in way, big 1st TB too.
tough one next either elseneer or gimblestob, i know al beat elseneer recently but am not sure who would be better for him as he has struggled vs gilles often.
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Count Zero - Creator of the Statistical Tennis Extrapolation & Verification ENtity or, as we like to call him, that steven.
An encouaging win for Alex, but it won't make much of a difference to his ranking - even if he wins the whole tournament, he'll only go up to about 125. Nevertheless, it all helps. Its going to be interesting to see how he performs against Gimelstob. For sure , it will be tough but it is the kind of match he must win if he is to break into the top 100, and his form in UK challengers has been fantastic. Good luck!