Qualifying starts tomorrow. I'm hoping that Daniel Cox, Dan Evans, Iain Atkinson, Ed Corrie, David Rice and Tim Hewitt will be competing either in the qualies or the main draw.
Rob Searle should definately get one of the wildcards after his recent form
It's great to have 3 Brits who've shown really good form indoors going into this tournament but after this week's results my money has to be on Jonny Marray to take the title.
Lee Childs is possibly Jonny's biggest threat IMO, he's lost to him several times before, in indoor tournaments. Bloomfield's got a slightly bigger serve than Jonny but he's not as good a volleyer. Jonny leads him 2-1 on head-to-heads with all 3 matches having been indoors. Childs and Marray's serves are similar power-wise but unlike Bloomfield, Childs has got the groundstrokes to hurt Jonny. It's going to be very interesting to see how the draw pans out. Maybe Alex Slabinsky will hit form and storm to the title
The 2nd seeded Aussie Rameez Junaid [wr: 372] is probably the biggest foreign threat, several of the other foreigners are clay-courters.
No Cox or Evans! Evans must have received a main draw wild card, because he said that he would be playing here.
It's pretty unlikely that Cox is skipping this event as he hasn't played since the U16 championships, so a main draw wild card must have gone to him. Or else.....
No Rob Searle, so I assume that he has a main draw wild card.
It'll be interesting to see how Josh Milton and Faris Akhazzan do. The two seeds in Akhazzan's eighth are Mat Lowe and Adam Barratclough and he plays Charlie Crisp in the first round. Faris lost to Charlie in a third set tiebreaker in the qualies of GB F12. Josh has a first round bye, but may play David Brewer in the final qualifying round.
Good to see lots of British juniors entering the qualies:
Aswell as the intriguing Akhazzan-Crisp match which Greenleaf mentioned, there's also an interesting match in rd1 between Scott Dickson and Andre Fitzpatrick. Dickson is rated highly by the LTA and is one of our leading U18s. However, Fitzpatrick could cause him a few problems, in the National U18 champs this summer he beat the winner of the U16 event that week in straights in rd1 and then gave Josh Milton a close match in rd2. The winner will face experienced Yorkshire pro Adam Barratclough in rd2 [Barratclough has qualified several times this year].
The Cambridgeshire no 1 U18 Bruce Wagstaff faces Wawrickshire no 2 U18, Maniel Bains in rd1. Bains is one of our best U16s. The winner will play Edward Allinson in rd2. Despite being seeded lower than Thomas Greenland [who he's seeded to meet in tomorrow's final qualifying round], I reckon Allinson will qualify - he's got an absolutely massive 1st serve which is extremely effective indoors, where he has his best results.
16 year old Sean Thornley should get through to the final qualifying round [though Josh Miller could give him a tough match in rd2], he'll be likely to face Konstantinos Kalaitzis who had some of the best results of his career this time last year.
Josh Milton is likely to face Chris Llewellyn in rd2 which would be a very interesting match, Llewellyn is another player who's rated very highly by the LTA. It'd be great to how Josh would do against David Brewer in the final qualifying round.
Yes, that is what Drew said in message 2. UFF mentioned Brits who had good form indoors, but I don't think he actually said this tournament was indoors(even if he thought it!)
Oops, I just assumed that for a GB futures in late September, it would be indoors, but you're quite right, it is outdoors. That's surprising with the indoor season starting.
In that case I revise my prediction about Allinson, I reckon Greenland will qualify instead.
I'm still going with Jonny Marray to win the tournament though, he's got lots of good memories of the courts there, having reached the challenger final on outdoor hard in 2005.
Thanks Madeline and I'm very sorry, Drew, didn't see your post for some reason.
This event also marks a year since Daniel Cox played his first Men's main draw match. He was just fourteen but took a set off Alex Miotto.
Indoor Futures season will begin next month on the 9th, with two events in Jersey and Glasgow one after the other.
Dan Cox will skip the one in Jersey because he'll play his second ever GA, in Osaka. He may sneak into a seeding position there and is capable of reaching the later stages in any case, so I doubt that he'll play in Glasgow either.
Evans is surely skipping the one in Glasgow, because he'll play a G4 in Denmark that week. No idea about why he's missing a chance to gain a point on a surface that most probably suits his style (if we go by results so far).
Dyce is skipping Osaka, which is a bit odd since that would have been a great opportunity for him to ensure a direct entry into the Australian Open Juniors. I think that he has a trip across the Atlantic on his mind, he should get a wild card in Glasgow at least.
The Osaka junior tournament should be really interesting to follow with several of our best future prospects involved: Cox, Cavaday, Curtis, Tara Moore
It's a shame that Dan Evans isn't playing those indoor futures but he'd probably have to go through qualifying as all the Glasgow wildcards are certain to go to Scots He's playing a string of junior events in Finland and Denmark, maybe he wants to recapture the European junior no 1 ranking by the end of the year.
Will there be good opportunities for Dyce to secure a place in the Aussie Open juniors after Osaka, Greenleaf ?
Qualifying results from Nottingham have just come in:
Top seed Richard Irwin is through to rd3, winning 6-0, 7-5 in rd2. He faces 19 year old Kyle Brassington tomorrow.
Surprisingly, Chris Llewellyn lost in 3 sets in rd1 to Ben Dunbar. Josh Milton had no problems in overcoming Dunbar in rd2, winning 6-2, 6-4 which sets up a match with David Brewer tomorrow. Brewer beat 17 year old Bradley Bant 6-3, 6-0 in rd2.
Tom Burn went awry in set 2 of his rd2 match against Simon Ferguson but recovered to win 6-3, 1-6, 6-1. He plays Joseph Dewhurst tomorrow.
12th seed Nikki Peel lost in rd2 to an unranked Austrian who Ross Connolly plays in rd3.
Surprising results occurred in the 6th section: Matt Illingworth beat Kalaitzis and Sean Thornley was outplayed in sets 2 and 3 by 17 year old Josh Miller 2-6, 6-0, 6-3.
Tom Greenland and Ed Allinson both won but Allinson was seriously tested in rd2 by 16 year old Maniel Bains winning in a final set tiebreak.
Charlie Crisp beat Faris 7-6, 6-0 but Scott Dickson has reached the final qualies rd in that section beat Barratclough
Nope, not too many opportunities for Dyce. He'll have to depend on withdrawals unless he plays out of the world tennis for the next few months.
Going by this year's dates, AO Junior entry deadline is before Orange Bowl, the last GA of the year. So even if does well there, it won't help.
One G1 that he is almost sure of playing is Eddie Herr, which is held in the IMG Academies itself. It'll be on his favoured surfaces and there'll be loads of familiar faces in the crowd. He needs to do really well there and if possible have a great run even in the doubles draw.
Nothing else in Europe or North America will attract him much except for a G2 in the US, where he may have a go. He also defends 30 singles and 2.5 doubles points in October.
Playing G4s would hardly help his cause and G3s won't help much unless he won the thing. So he needs to improves his doubles results quite a bit along with playing some great singles at Eddie Herr and elsewhere.
It surprised me that he skipped Tokyo. He would have received a seeding and the field is really weak. A quarters appearence would have rocketed him up into the top 80. Ah welll... it's his choice.