This one's in the USA next week, not to be confused with the Orleans challenger which is occurring in France at the same time.
Josh Goodall is the only British representative here, he was 1st on the alternates list but he's now into the main draw.
Entry list:
1 Delic, Amer USA 148 2 Reynolds, Bobby USA 150 3 Morrison, Jeff USA 156 4 Russell, Michael USA 159 5 Dorsch, Benedikt GER 165 6 Querrey, Sam USA 177 7 Odesnik, Wayne USA 181 8 Witten, Jesse USA 190 9 Fleishman, Zack USA 198 OUT Echagaray, Bruno MEX 199 11 Bogomolov Jr., Alex USA 206 OUT Widom, Todd USA 214 13 Guccione, Chris AUS 220 14 Mamiit, Cecil PHI 222 15 Gonzalez, Santiago MEX 230 16 Warburg, Sam USA 237 17 Simmonds, Phillip USA 239 18 Lammer, Michael SUI 241 19 Heuberger, Ivo SUI 245 20 Oudsema, Scott USA 258 21 Kindlmann, Dieter GER 259 22 Jenkins, Scoville USA 261 23 (SE) 24 (SE) 25 (WC) 26 (WC) 27 (WC) 28 (WC) 29 (Q) 30 (Q) 31 (Q) 32 (Q)
Alternates IN Goodall, Joshua GBR 262 OUT Jones, Alun AUS 264 IN Ram, Rajeev USA 266 IN Kuznetsov, Alex USA 271 IN Nunez, Eric USA 273 OUT Rojer, Jean-Julien AHO 282 OUT Rehnquist, Bjorn SWE 283 1. Romero, Yohny VEN 288 2. Monroe, Nick USA 299 OUT Mankad, Harsh IND 301 3. Fruttero, John Paul USA 320 OUT Sela, Dudi ISR 323 4. Nielsen, Frederik DEN 324 5. Chadaj, Adam POL 333 6. Evans, Brendan USA 345 7. Wilson, Brian USA 347 8. Cleveland, Tyler USA 350 9. Amritraj, Prakash IND 351 10. Yani, Michael USA 353 11. Adjei-Darko, Henry GHA 357
I don't think the draw is that bad for Josh, qualifying for consecutive grand slams shows that he can cut it at this level. He is going to have to start beating guys in the top 200 at some stage. And Josh knows he can beat Guccione, he did so in three very tight sets on the grass at Manchester straight after wimbledon. Guccione has had little recent success on hard courts and his last two tournaments were on clay.
I have high hopes for Josh, I think he is more likely to make real progress up the rankings in this final quarter of the year than any other British player.
The draw certainly could have been kinder, the Guccione serve is never nice to face, not least on fast, bouncy US hard courts. The Aussie's also in decent form, he reached the final of the Geneva challenger on clay which was impressive.
When he lost to Josh in Manchester it was in two tiebreaks, Josh definately seems to hold his nerve well in those breakers and he'll need that again. Hopefully, having beaten Guccione so recently will give josh a real edge coming into this match. He's better off the ground than the Aussie so hopefully he can get enough returns back and make that count.
Looking at the draw, there's definately no one there who Josh can't beat. The top seed [Delic] is only ranked 144 and Josh has beaten guys with similar rankings and his confidence must be sky-high right now.
I agree Steve, I have really big hopes for Josh and Boggo in this latter part of the year. Hopefully they can make real ranking progress considering they've got relatively little to defend.
Josh is in the doubles with Ross Hutchins, they're the 4th seeds and face Dieter Kindlemann and Michael Lammer in rd1. Lammer is a former top 100 singles player. They were due to play last night but it was rained off.
I wonder what happened to Josh this week !!! Those two results were rather surprisingly one-sided, must have been difficult playing on wet, slippy courts though - there's been a lot a rain postponing play in New Orleans this week and as we know from the US Open, the facilities American tournaments have for coping with rain aren't exactly high-tech !!!
Playing a guy like Guccione on wet courts would have been really tough, the moisture would have given his big shots even more zip.
Josh lost 2-6 3-6
