Alex faces Alejandro Falla in rd1

Falla's currently ranked 115 [peaking at 110 in July 2004]. He's an all-court player having had success on clay, grass and hard courts. Alex may catch Falla a little rusty, as due to Davis Cup duty for Columbia he hasn't played indoors since November 2005 so he may struggle with his timing in the early stages. He also did well in challengers earlier this year, reaching two finals in South America. Falla's a regular feature in Grand slam main draws, he's one of the most consistent players in the qualies, he qualifies on a regular basis. This year he got into the French Open as a lucky loser before losing to Federer in rd2. At Wimbledon he qualified and then beat Davydenko in 4 sets in rd1 before losing in 4 in rd2. He qualified for the US Open and beat Del Potro in 4 sets in rd1 before losing to Tursunov in rd2.

Bogdanovic and Falla have played once before, in the juniors back in 2001 when Falla won 6-4, 4-6, 7-6[9] in the quarters of the Argentian Bowl on clay.

I reckon it's a pretty good draw for Alex, he has a good chance against Falla. I've seen Falla play a couple of times before and he's just basically consistent, hits with lots of topspin off both sides and is adept at manouevering his opponents around the court and grinding them down. Alex definately has the bigger serve and shots. Falla's game is not particularly well suited to indoor courts but he's still going to be a tricky opponent, he's very fast and will make Alex hit a lot of balls.

Intriguing that the winner will probably play Sluiter given that GB play Holland in the Davis Cup next April, probably indoors. If Alex wins, possibly a good chance to stake a place in the team to John Lloyd !!


-- Edited by UltimateBoggoFan at 10:20, 2006-10-01

Alex is 4th on court 1 tomorrow at approx 2.30 pm

UltimateBoggoFan wrote:

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Tournament website:
http://www.ethiastrophy.be


Live scoring:
http://users.telenet.be/PatatRiek/male/index.htm

Click that link and then click "LIVE" to get the score updates. It's every couple of points which is good.

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Silly me!

They're warming up right now

Unfortunately the scoreboard isn't updating regularly at the moment which is frustrating, it was better last year.

However, the good news is that Alex has broken straight away in game 2 and he leads 2-0 and is currently serving

goldenboy wrote:

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alex has to win these kind of matches if he has top 100 aspirations!

new brit 3 must be an incentive!

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I agree, Falla is the sort of player he should beat, he's very fast around the court and hits with a lot of topspin but I think that Alex has a better game indoors. That performance against Henman last week should hopefully give him a lot of confidence that he belongs at that level and he's better than a lot of these guys on the challenger circuit.

One of Barry Cowan's pearls of wisdom during that match was that he didn't feel indoors was Alex's best surface because he can get outhit by big-hitters on it. Can anyone remember Alex getting outhit indoors even by a fairly big hitter ?

He's beaten guys like Kunitsyn who strikes the ball pretty big and also Dick Norman, Alex Waske [twice]

-- Edited by UltimateBoggoFan at 15:38, 2006-10-03