British Tennis Forum - Celebrating 20 Years!

Watched the first set of this one - highly entertaining. Jake broke in the very first game, which proved to be his best chance. Unfortunately Chidekh then broke straight back.

Jake served very well for the rest of the first set, which pretty much kept him in the match. I watched Chidekh at the start of the year and wondered why he was only ranked 200ish - he's an incredibly dangerous player, especially indoors. He's been on a bit of a hot streak recently, which doesn't surprise me.

Today, he played like a top 50 player. He's not the biggest of guys but incredibly quick to cover the court, and like many of the shorter French players, has fabulous hand skills. His touch around the net was the difference between the two of them in the first set.

Jake continued his recent approach of trying to attack and get forward as much as possible, but Clem put him the sword. Numerous passing shots from seemingly impossible angles, even when Jake had absolutely leathered the approach. Commentators were noting that Jake isn't the most natural at the net, some of his half volleys and low volleys were a bit ham-fisted, but something for him to work on.

Essentially, I don't think Jake played badly at all, he just came up against a guy in red hot form.

Same with Toby who got a little bit of a lesson in terms of how the main tour is a step up from the challengers. Bergs was super pumped up with this being his home tournament, and served phenomenally well. Toby didn't do much wrong, but on a fast indoor court, he dropped serve once in the first, and had a bit of a slow start to the tiebreak in the second and that was enough.