If he can beat Rushby, he must be worth a place in the top 1000!
from LTA...
"The men’s final stretched to three extremely close sets with Adam Barratclough beating close friend and world No.652 Tom Rushby from Derbyshire 6-7(1), 6-4, 7-5.
Barratclough, currently without a world ranking, spent the week commuting from Sunderland where he works at the Puma Tennis Centre to enable him to carry out his duties as a tennis coach every evening.
The 22-year-old was delighted with his first title. “It was a really close match which came down to a few key points which luckily I managed to win,” he said.
“We both held serve through the first set but he played very well in the tie-break. I got the important breaks in the second and third sets and just had to concentrate on holding serve which he didn’t make easy for me.”
Barratclough will now continue to coach until Christmas but is intending to return to life as a full-time professional in the new year.
“I’ve been to a few Tour finals but it’s great to have actually won an event. I haven’t played much competitively recently, I’ve been concentrating on coaching to earn a bit of money but this is a great confidence boost. I’m going to spend the next six weeks coaching and working on my fitness and then start playing in January.”
I expect that Madeline is a big fan of Barratclough, he's a Sunderland lad. Gained 2 ranking points in 2005 but they both dropped off this year.
The closest he's come to getting a ranking point this year was in Ireland when he qualified and then took the 1st set against Troy Hahn before losing in 3.
From his results this year, I wouldn't hold out much hope of him breaking the top 1000 but maybe he hasn't been playing professionally full-time this year, that could make the difference in 2007 given the extra time he'll be able to spend practising and working on fitness.
Come on, I'm from Tyneside, Sunderland is the enemy!
Seriously, I have never seen him and didn't know he came from there. I do watch out for the results of Iain Atkinson, who is also local and who quite impressed me the couple of times I have seen him.
