QR3: (q3) James Auckland WR 435 lost to (q8) Thomas Oger (FRA) WR 488 by 4 & 2

Oger's last tournament was the Manchester Challenger, where he beat Colin Fleming before losing to Martin Lee, both in three sets. I thought Aucks might have a tough match but didn't expect him to go down so easily.  However, there were two LL places and he got one of them, and was lucky enough to get drawn against the other LL!

R1: (LL) James Auckland WR 441 v (LL) Federico Torresi (ITA) WR 459
R1: (6) Alex Bogdanovic WR 141 v Dieter Kindlmann (GER) WR 269

 

 

Why is it that so many Brits lose in the final round of challenger qualifying overseas, apart from Jamie Baker last week in Binghamton, a Brit actually qualifying seems to be an incredibly rare occurence.

Often Brits get through as lucky losers but they've missed out on the valuable extra couple of points for qualifying.

Hopefully James can take advantage of his fortunate 1st round draw, and secure 5 points. Can't see him going past round 2 though, if he wins he'll play either Cyril Saulnier or Chris Guccione - both massive hitters.

UltimateFlemingFan wrote:

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Why is it that so many Brits lose in the final round of challenger qualifying overseas, apart from Jamie Baker last week in Binghamton, a Brit actually qualifying seems to be an incredibly rare occurence. Often Brits get through as lucky losers but they've missed out on the valuable extra couple of points for qualifying. 

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So it's not just me who's noticed that happening remarkably often ... bizarre, isn't it.

At least James took advantage of his second chance to beat Torresi. However it looks like being the only main draw singles win of the Bronx and Graz Challengers out of 8 or 9 British players. The problem seems to be a lack of versatility in terms of playing surfaces, with most of the 20+ players only being comfortable on fast surfaces, and unable to adapt to slower American hard courts. At least younger players such as Jamie Baker and Colin Fleming have competed on a variety of surfaces around the world and will therefore be more adaptable, hopefully! It now seems obligatory for the 16 year olds and under to complete regularly on clay which as Andy Murray has shown produces players with much better groundstrokes than fast courts.

The problem for the faster court players is that there aren't enough tournaments played on fast surfaces for them to win sufficient ranking points to progress beyond the 200 mark unless they are winning or getting to finals, which they rarely do because there are so many foreign players with better all court games competing at Challenger and even Futures level, as well as the younger players like Cilic coming through. It's almost reached the stage where there is more of a future in Doubles for the players from the 'lost generation', with several pairs now ranked between 200-350, Whether this is just for Davis Cup or a smart career move remains to be seen.

I don't blame the players - they do as well as their history of limited coaching and the blinkered policies of the Lawn Tennis Association (surely a name change is needed to remove the fixation on grass!) allows.

Hutchins and Marray won their first round doubles todat 64 64 against Sirianni and Todero who are no pushovers!

So thats another 12 points and 270 euros in the bag and in the next round they face Sancic and Novkovic. Sancic knocked Jonny M out of singles qualifying so a possible chance for some revenge. Sancic and Novkovic won their match against Austrian wildcards 10-6 in the Chanpion Tie Breaker so Marray/Hutchins should be able to dispatch them!

Count Zero wrote:

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mtf has alex losing 46 57

its a shame for him, but after such a long lay off its always harder, i wonder if he will go to the states.

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A disappointing result but with the long layoff it had to be expected really, I wonder if the hip injury is still causing him problems. I don't think he likes rebound ace courts having deliberately avoided playing on them in Australia at the start of the year, it wasn't the best surface for him to have made his return on, all the long rallies will hardly have eased his hip gently back into action. The rain this week would also have made them quite slow and sluggish.

I hope he's able to go to USO qualies - the courts there are fast and bouncy and suit him down to the ground.

Great win for Auckland in round 1, makes up for his qualies loss and gains him a useful 5 points. Unless he maybe makes a sudden comeback to the form of last autumn, I can't see him troubling Saulnier who must have been in a great returning groove to have disposed of Guccione in straights without needing tiebreaks. Saulnier has been as high as 48 in the world in 2005 when he reached the final of San Jose, beat Tipsarevic at the USO and took a set off Ljubicic. In 2004 he beat Rusedski at 5 sets at US Open. He's played James before, in rd1 of this year's Cardiff Challenger, winning 6-4, 6-2.

Hopefully the match will be on centre, but as with all these streaming things I can't get it to work as Firefox won't allow me to load Flash player.

Great doubles win for Hutchins/Marray. Sirianni beat Max Mirnyi at the Aussie Open a couple of years ago, he's been close to the top 100. Auckland/Delgado play today, should be able to follow them on the scoreboard.