Orleans 75K Challenger

Sheddie · administrator

Orleans 75K Challenger

Sheddie · administrator

So it looks like it probably be like this:

Main draw: Alex Bogdanovic, Martin Lee

Qualifying: Richard Bloomfield, Arvind Parmar, Jamie Delgado [?]

Richard's 4th on the alternates list but with only 1 day remaining for 4 players to withdraw it looks like he be in the qualies. I assume that Jamie Delgado and Jamie Murray will head here for the start of the indoor season rather than stay on the clay and go to Seville. Jamie D will surely have a better chance of qualifying for the singles in an indoor tournament rather than on clay. Maybe Lee and Parmar will link up for the doubles.

It's good news that Boggo will be seeded and avoid guys like Sluiter, Norman, Tipsarevic, Saulnier and Dupuis until the quarters. It's quite a tough entry list though, no easy looking rd1 matches at all but hopefully Boggo will be inspired by returning to his fav surface. It'll be interesting to see how Younes El Aynaoui does !

The tournament website has either live streaming or a live scoreboard from the looks of things which is great [why is it that the European challenger websites are almost always better than the American ones ?]. Hopefully it's working for the qualifying starting on Saturday.

-- Edited by UltimateFlemingFan at 14:23, 2006-09-07

Count Zero · Tennis legend

UltimateFlemingFan wrote:

[why is it that the European challenger websites are almost always better than the American ones ?].
-- Edited by UltimateFlemingFan at 14:23, 2006-09-07

cept for uk ones that is.

at least okun isnt in the draw!!

Sheddie · administrator

Too true

The Manchester and Surbiton websites are better than some USA ones though [which are often just designed to promote a sports centre and give no info at all on the challenger apart from a box office number]. At least Manchester and Surbiton give excellent daily reports, Surbiton would be even better if it hadn't scrapped it's live scoreboard

Lol, Alex must be very, very happy about no Okun. Unless, of course the bogeyman enters qualifying and Alex gets drawn against him in rd1 that way

Nick_Squashplayer · Social player

Hopefully jamie d will play here, his ranking has really dropped recently. Does anyone know why he hasn't played as much recently?

Sheddie · administrator

I think that losing two emotionally and physically draining 5 setters in the Davis Cup knocked the stuffing out of Jamie and it took him about 3 weeks to recover from it so he missed the Nottingham challenger and the two GB futures events in Ikley and Wrexham and as a result he wasn't able to defend points won in August 2005. In the last 4 weeks he's played 3 challengers + 1 week of training on clay in Italy but although he's had lots of doubles success, he's lost in singles qualifying in each of the challengers.

Nick_Squashplayer · Social player

Ah i see. But before the davis cup, i didn't think he had played that many tournaments, not compared to the previous season. I heard that he might consider retiring, the same with arvid parmar, if his ranking doesn't improve. You hear anything on that?

Sheddie · administrator

I don't think Jamie has any plans to retire at the moment. At the start of the year, he was still very determined, stating how he still believed he could get higher than his career best of 121 and that he aimed to get into the top 100 by the end of 2006 [unfortunately that's not possible now !]. He played quite a lot of tournament for the first 4 months of 2006. He was hampered by a recurrence of his back problems at the end of April, keeping him out for a month [the back problems put him out of action for quite a bit of time in 2005]. It'll be interesting to see how his plans have been revised by the end of the year but I'll don't think he'll quit just yet as he has a real chance of getting into the top 100 doubles, with good partnerships developing with James Auckland and Jamie Murray.

I'm not sure about Arvind, I haven't heard anything about plans to retire from him. However, if he doesn't get into the top 200 next year and his ranking slips further down meaning that he has to play futures, maybe he will start thinking about calling it a day.

Count Zero · Tennis legend

the fact that arvs has been doing some punditry work would maybe suggest he is looking to keep his options open, he is still capable of the odd good week, but i think if he does slip down to futures he can probably make better money coaching and obviuosly he wont be travelling around the world, i'm sure thats fun for a while, and great on the atp tour, but i dont think the challengers are quite so galmerous and the big man has been on the circuit for a long time now.

cant see jamie retiring just yet tho.

Sheddie · administrator

I didn't know Arv had been doing punditry work, was he on the BBC commentary team for Wimbledon ? Maybe he'll be joining Barry Cowan at Eurosport soon

He got closer than Barry did to beating Sampras.

In 2005, our club did a Q&A session with him and he said that he'd be interested in doing coaching there once he retires. I suspect that he wouldn't want to do that permanently though, he'll probably look to get the coaching qualifications and then move on to a higher level, maybe with some of our top juniors.

-- Edited by UltimateFlemingFan at 11:11, 2006-09-08

Count Zero · Tennis legend

yeah, he was in the eurosport studio at one time recently, i think it may have been the AO but i cant remember exactly.

Nick_Squashplayer · Social player

Hi, well i hope jamie or arv decide to give it ago for a few more seasons at least. I think jamie still has a chance of getting into the top 150 again, i dunno about top 100, but we will see.

Sheddie · administrator

4 Brits in qualies action here: Parmar [2nd seed], Marray, Auckland [8th seed] and Mackin [4th seed]. Parmar and Auckland are seeded to play each other in the final qualies round.

Rd1:
A Parmar [2] v bye
A Mackin [4] v bye
J Auckland [8] v A Mannarino [Fr]
J Marray v I Mijic [Ger][WC]

Auckland's opponent is an 18 year old leftie ranked 486. He's lost 7 out of his last 8 matches, stretching back to June. He's won two 10K futures titles this year in Spain on outdoor hard courts and earlier in the year he made two futures quarters indoors. James should win though, his big-hitting game is very much suited for indoor tournaments, lets hope the Frenchman's losing sequence continues.

Jonny has a simpler task against unranked 16 year old German wildcard Ivo Mijic. Mijic's best showing in a futures was reaching the final qualifying round of a 10K back in July 2005. If Jonny and James both win, they'll play each other in rd2.

Arvind will face either Andrei Golubev or wildcard Jean Loglo in rd2. From the stats it looks like it'll be Golubev, a 19 year old ranked 408 who reached the final of a futures in Italy just a couple of weeks ago.

Alan will face either Clement Morel or Artem Sitak in rd1. Sitak was incidentally double-bagelled by Boggo in Wimbledon juniors 4 years ago.

Sheddie · administrator

Unfortunately the live scoreboard isn't working at the moment so it looks like we won't be able to follow Auckland and Marray's rd1 matches

Count Zero · Tennis legend

jonny & james both won, 62,75 and 76,46,64 respectivly and play each other next.

makin will play morel.