The Surbiton wildcards will be announced sometime next week, the LTA said that they'd wait for results from and during the French before deciding.

With very few of our top 20 players competing next week, I presume they're waiting to see if Rusedski, Henman or Murray lose early in the French and then request a Surbiton wildcard to prepare for Queens.

Out of interest, when was the last time Henman played at Surbiton ?

Greg has played the tournament quite regularly over the last few years, the amazing thing is that he's never won it. Considering how fast the courts are there, that really shows how strong the Surbiton field usually is. It ought to be upgraded from 50K [which is a bottom level challenger].

If it`s a 50K, the points will be 1, 5, 12, 22,35, 50.

it just shows how cheap they are, they could easily up the prize money but wont, they know that in all likley hood it wouldnt attract a stronger field anyway due to its timing.

compare to belgrade, they had a great event and staright away uped the prize money cause they were proud of it.  

5 top hundred players and 12 inside top 115 is very strong for almost any challenger isnt it, bar sunrise.

i have no idea who is in charge of deciding the lvls. i had assumed the lta foots the bill for the prize money, the sponsers just help make the difference up on the smaller events, on stella/nottingham atp i would epxect the sponsors to pay.

i think the lta were the ones who decided to srcap the british tour and put all those futures on so i guess they pay for them there.

edit: in the past hasn't surbition just had live game scores, not points. its betetr then nothign i guess.

i think its not too difficult to do real live scores, i think they just hook it up to the umpires little machine thingy or the main score boards (which his why somethimes the scores correct if he/she press the wrong button)

-- Edited by Count Zero at 16:53, 2006-05-25

I agree RJA, they should make Surbiton 125K or at the very least 100K.

Unlike other British challengers Surbiton actually gets quite a large number of spectators and apart from qualies which are free, you have to pay £8 for a ticket so the tournament must make quite a bit of dosh from that.

The British tour still runs Count Zero, there aren't many events though, did there used to be more ?

Surbiton had live game scores up until last year and they promised to have them this year. As Count says, it's not that good but at least there are live scores.

Wildcards will be chosen on Thursday.

Is anyone going to the qualies or the main draw ?

Andy would have to have a wildcard, but I doubt if he will be asking for one. He needs to sort out this back problem before Queens and playing Surbiton would surely not be a good idea.