Surprisingly Jamie Murray elected only to play doubles this week but Jamie Delgado gave us a representative in the qualifying.
He was 4th seed but lost in rd1 to Frenchman Fabrice Martin 7-6[7], 6-2. This was a very disappointing defeat as 19 year old Martin is ranked a long way below Jamie at 668. However, the courts in Leon take some getting used to as it's at altitude so the balls shoot off the courts and bounce very high.
Jamie hasn't had a good 2006 so far, he says that his aim is to get close to the top 100 by the end of the year but that isn't looking likely at the moment, particularly as he's probably going to have to win his way through Wimbledon qualifying yet again to defend his points there.
Qualies rd1: F Martin [Fr] bt J Delgado [GB] 7-6[7], 6-2
Rd1: C Mamiit [Phi] bt A Mackin [GB] 2-6, 6-3, 7-5
And then there were two !!! It's been a dire week for British men's tennis, with most players crashing out in rd1 or qualifying. Now Britain's only representatives in tournaments are Alex Bogdanovic [Cardiff] and Alex Slabinsky [Japan].
Alan must be cursing his luck at the moment as he keeps ending up on the wrong end of really tight 3 set matches. Veteran Cecil Mamiit [now representing the Phillipines rather than the USA] is a former top 100 player having reached world no 72 in 1999. He's in decent form having reached a couple of challenger quarter-finals but he's only ranked 234 and this is the type of match which Alan needs to start winning if he's going to make further ranking progress. Still, it's great to see him going for challengers rather than futures and satellites as he has done in the past.
Doubles:
Jamie Murray teamed up with Jamie Delgado but they were drawn against the 2nd seeds Drake and Mamiit and lost a really close match 3-6, 6-3, 10-8. Jamie Murray now flies back to Britain [I'm not totally sure of his movements for the next couple of weeks but after that, he's heading to Greece for 3 futures events along with Colin Fleming.
Alan Mackin is partnering Aussie Rob Smeets and they beat 4th seeded Mexicans Garca and Gonzalez 6-4, 6-1 in rd1. They play Mexican wildcards in the quarters.
-- Edited by UltimateSlabbaFan at 09:22, 2006-04-19
I think Alan will be heading to Mexico City now for the 25K+H Challenger next week but the surprising news is that he's not playing the clay-court futures event in Bournemouth the week after. I'll try and find out more on his movements that week.
-- Edited by UltimateSlabbaFan at 16:11, 2006-04-20
