With the grass-court season only just over a month away, I wondered who you think should get the wildcards.
If you were the tournament organiser of Queens, Nottingham and Wimbledon, which players would you give wildcards to ? [Edit: this isn't taking into account the wildcard playoff, eg for Wimbledon if you had 8 wcs which 8 players would you give them to.]
Main draw: For Queens you have 5 wildcards to hand out, for Nottingham you have 2 and for Wimbledon you have 8.
Qualifying: For Queens you have 4 wildcards, for Nottingham you have 4 and for Wimbledon you have 9.
Which British player do you think will be the most successful during the grass-court season [not including Murray, Rusedski or Henman] ?
-- Edited by UltimateSlabbaFan at 11:09, 2006-04-19
boggo should get them alround, he hasnt had wcs for queens or nottingham for 2 years now and he realitisicly has the potenial to make some progress at all the grass events.
i forget the exact rules for wimby wc's for the others, but they may well decide themsleves accordingly.
i think the rest should go to the younger players, but the question is who, you have 4 left for queens and 1 for nottingam and they should be spread evenly, theres no garuntee that all thwe queens will go to brits theres always the chance a big name may apply late.
i guess fleming and baker should be in line for some, jamie murray has accepted a wc at liverpool so i guess he is out.
with respect to who will achieve the best results i think if alex can go in injury free and feelign confident he could pick up some good results.
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Count Zero - Creator of the Statistical Tennis Extrapolation & Verification ENtity or, as we like to call him, that steven.
queens: Andy, Josh, Jamie Dlegado, James blake, Mark Philipouis. jamie bt monfils 1st round then lost to gasquet, josh lost to greg.
Nottigham: jonny, alan and andy (wd) also popp used a Pr, here strangly jonny and alan drew each other 1st round, jonny won is SS the lost to gasquet 2nd round.
Wimbers: alex, andy, david, mark philipou, blake, alan, josh and jonny. where david lost in the 2nd round.
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Count Zero - Creator of the Statistical Tennis Extrapolation & Verification ENtity or, as we like to call him, that steven.
This is what it said on the LTA website for last year...
Only men in the world’s top 300 and women in the top 250 will be eligible for nomination for a main draw wildcard, unless under the age of 20 for men and 19 for women.
Wildcard playoffs will be played out over three days with the winners guaranteed a main draw wildcard.
It has also been announced that no player will receive any more than three direct wild cards, unless ranked in the world’s top 150, or returning from serious injury in the past year.
so far only the ones below qualify, alex and arv had definatly had 3, al should be ok unless they chnage the rules, i think martin will probably have had 3 in career and so might alan.
boggo 141
arvs 205
lee 251
alan 261
bloomers 264
baker 278
so i would give to alex, baker, bloomers, smith, flemming, 1 for the WC play off (big arvs probably) thats 6.
-- Edited by Count Zero at 12:26, 2006-04-19
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Count Zero - Creator of the Statistical Tennis Extrapolation & Verification ENtity or, as we like to call him, that steven.
Chris Eaton (18) Andrew Kennaugh (18) Alan Wright (18) Jamie Baker (19) Tom Rushby (19) Joshua Goodall (20) Jamie Murray (20) Alexander Slabinsky (20) Colin Fleming (21)
i think al's age is often forgotten cause it feels he has been around so long.
does anyone else start to see some similarities between him and andy in the way they go about their careers, both are confident to go their own way on things, neither have worked with the lta set up and havent got on with the lta provided coachs,
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Count Zero - Creator of the Statistical Tennis Extrapolation & Verification ENtity or, as we like to call him, that steven.
When Alex was 15 he got sent to an LTA intermediate squad but he didn't like it and soon left. He didn't get on with the squad coach Tito Vasquez, to quote Alex himself, Vasquez was "an Argentinian with a very negative attitude."
Alex has definately had his fair share of problems with coaches, I remember he had one who got drunk after Alex won a challenger. The coach got involved in a punch-up at the hotel and ended up being thrown in a police cell for the night
-- Edited by Andy for number 1 at 17:00, 2006-04-19