Andy Kennaugh, Chris Eaton, Amadeus Fulford-Jones and Simon Harston are all entered for this 10K. They've picked it well as the field's not particularly strong and it's on hard courts.
Qualifying:
J Southwood [GB] v E Alikhanbekov [USA] [The real reason why there are no umpires for many futures qualifying matches is due to the abundance of players with surnames like this !]
T Bradshaw [GB] v U Batuk [Tur]
C Hartfield [GB] v C Haarmann [Ger]
S Ferguson [GB] v N Tarim [Tur]
All these Brits and their opponents are unranked so I can't really assess their chances of victory. I suppose that Tim Bradshaw is the least likely to win as his opponent is a Turk.
Simon Ferguson: 18 year old from Birmingham, lists hobbies as playstation and football, has been playing on the tour since the start of this year. Has yet to qualify for a main draw but has come close. He's a top county player for Wawrickshire with an LTA rating of 2.2.
Chris Hartfield: Aged 21.
Tim Bradshaw: Aged 20. Has an LTA rating of 2.1. Top county player for Herefordshire.
Harfield GBR vs Adem Ozmeral TUR ranked 1517 (1 point I believe)
Ferguson GBR vs Cheeong-Eui Kim KOR ranked 1415 (maybe 2 or 3 points)
All of these opponents drew byes in the first round so the brits will know the surface better, but if they're playing twoce in a day will be more knackered!
That's a really great start for the Brits, can't get much better than 4/4 in rd1 !!!
All those rd2 matches are winnable, Simon Ferguson's opponent is the toughest but he'll only have 2 points. The difference in standard between players ranked 1200-1500 and the unranked players isn't really that big.
Kennaugh and Eaton faces Amadeus and Stephen Moros (USA) in round one doubles. Should be a close match though Fulford Jones/Moros are ranked higher and I think are 4th seeds.
For the record that's Simon Harston's first win in a main draw since October 2005. The 27 year old left-hander from Bath qualified and reached the final of GB F15 in Jersey last October in a stunning run which included a victory over Jamie Baker. However, since then he's struggled to win a match. Before this tournament, he's only played twice in 2006.
His rd2 match against top seed Satschko was always going to be really tough as the German clay-court specialist is ranked 404 and reached the final of Turkey F1 last week.
Chris Eaton's defeat was more disappointing, Peranec is ranked 572 but he's come straight from Venezuala and struggled in rd1, dropping set 2 6-1 to a player ranked well outside the top 1000 so I thought Chris had a chance of an upset.
After his fantastic performance against Delic in Queens qualies, Andy Kennaugh will be disappointed with losing so conclusively against Scherer. Both he and Chris Eaton have struggled this summer in Eastern Europe.
