Finland F2

Niall · Pro player

RE: Finland F2

Sheddie · administrator

Fantastic win for Rob Searle !! I make that a career best, great to see a Brit give Ghedin a good beating after he dominated our hard court futures in August. He'll move up to about 885 if he loses in the quarters.

Really good win for Alex Miotto aswell, taking advantage of a kind draw. He'll move up to about 909 in the rankings now.

It'd be great to see a Brit ranked outside the top 900 make a futures semis outside of Britain, there's a reasonable chance of that happening. Searle plays 4th seed Sweden's Marcus Sarstrand [wr: 456] who's easily beaten two players ranked outside the top 1000 in the 1st couple of rounds. Rob should give him a much harder test.

Alex Miotto has a better chance against 5th seed Tino Nieminen, brother of Jarkko. Tino is ranked 480 and struggled in rd1 against a player with a similar ranking to Alex, only just winning in 3 sets.

Niall · Pro player

Bad news from Finland. They all lost.

Sarstrand bt Searle 6-0 6-2

Nieminen bt Miotto 6-3 6-1

Nielsen & Paukku bt Searle & Corkery 7-5 6-3

Searle seems to be quite inconsistent, in his short pro career he has had some really encouraging wins and some real beatings.

imoen · Admin: Moderator+Tennis Legend

none of those results were particularly surprising but they were still disapointing.

johnnylad · Tennis legend

For his ranking Searle is picking his tournaments well and progressing well.

I think he'll need to work on his consistency though, as you say. Its all about back to back performances to make it to the top, just look at Andy over the past month!

johnnylad · Tennis legend

UltimateFlemingFan wrote:

That's a real shame about Matt Smith, do you know if he was injured or did he just miss his flight ? He would have had a great chance of making the latter stages of this one and gaining valuable points. He's got a few more free weeks before he'll have to start defending quite a few points.

I think he may be injured. He withdrew from Spain F28 on 24th August. He would have been seeded2nd.

Sheddie · administrator

Unfortunately Searle and Corkery lost the doubles final 3-6, 6-4, 6-3

Shame about the quarter-final singles results but they had to be expected, both players were competing against opponents ranked around 500 places higher. Both Searle and Miotto have had a great week points-wise.

Searle is progressing well, a target of top 700 by the end of 2006 seems reasonable given that he has absolutely no points to defend.

I hope Matt Smith recovers soon, it's a bad time at the moment for him and Martin Lee