I'll go for Tim in 4.. As we've seen Tursonov isn't exactly the best clay clourt player considering his form on the clay court season so far this year. So I'd expect it might be a bit closer than the 1st round match but I feel Tim could breeze through the match if he hits top form.
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Supporting Andy Murrays charge to the 2009 Wimbledon crown.
Tursonov has a ton of power and his ground strokes will punish....Tim has never beaten him....Tursonov has also just taken out a good clay court player....cold heavy conditions will hurt Henman.....but having said all that....Henman in four as he needs to climb right back up those rankings....
If Tim plays like he did yesterday, he should win. Yes, Carlssen is ranked much lower than Tursunov, and yes I know the head-to-head, but Dmitry really does not like clay and his record on it is pretty poor. I have voted for 4 sets, because I don't trust our Tim not to have a dip in form. . .
But that being said, it all depends on Tim's back problems!
Moved Stevemqueen's post to here from a duplicate thread.....
He wrote.....
We all know that Tursanov has beaten Tim at both Wimbledon last year and at the Aus open this year. I fancy Tim will have his revenge when they play in the 2nd round here - Tursunov's clay court form has been absolutely dreadful! In 6 tournaments, he his only victory was against an unranked Portugese wild card in the first round of Estoril and he has twice lost to players whose ranking's are in the 200s.
It'll be a difficult match for Tim as due to the rain, conditions will be quite damp and fairly slow and Tursunov's extra power will count for a lot. I would pick Dmitry to win if he had a better clay-court pedigree. As steve said, he's really struggled on the clay this year and in previous years and admitted in his blog that he hates the stuff and wished that RG was played on Mars and there was another hard court slam in it's place, lol ! I think Henman will outdo Tursunov for consistency and also the Henman forehand was really on fire against Carlsen, hopefully it's a similar story today. Henman needs to keep aggressive and attack the net and not get bogged down in long baseline rallies as he was in the Aussie Open.
Kiefer match has just finished, went on to something like 11-9 in the 5th !
There's still a women's match before Tim and that's only just started, so assuming that there's no more rain, Tim will start at around 7.
Hopefully live.ae will have stopped showing basketball by then, the Dutch seem to be obsessed with it, they've been showing it for nearly 3 hours now. At intervals, they flash up their world cup squad which they've done about 4 times
-- Edited by UltimateSlabbaFan at 17:32, 2006-05-31
That Kiefer match looks incredible. He blew Gicquel off the court for the first wo sets and then only won 11-9 in the fifth. There are some odd scores on clay. Its never over till its over.
Womens match is currently 6-2 3-2 to Schiavone the ninth seed. As USB said hoping for a 7pm start.