Alex 1st alt in the line-up here, so thats pretty much a guaranteed place in the main draw! pretty weak field so a chance to go places - i think this may be a round robin event?
1 Blake, James USA 4 2 Haas, Tommy GER 11 3 Malisse, Xavier BEL 37 4 Mayer, Florian GER 56 5 Becker, Benjamin GER 58 6 Kohlschreiber, Philipp GER 62 7 Garcia-Lopez, Guillermo ESP 68 8 Spadea, Vincent USA 73 9 Rochus, Christophe BEL 78 OUT 10 Greul, Simon GER 82 11 Pless, Kristian DEN 84 12 Gimelstob, Justin USA 86 OUT 13 Kendrick, Robert USA 87 14 Lu, Yen-Hsun TPE 89 15 Delic, Amer USA 93 16 Kunitsyn, Igor RUS 94 17 Schuettler, Rainer GER 97 18 Kim, Kevin USA 101 19 Sanguinetti, Davide ITA 107 20 Falla, Alejandro COL 108 21 Vicente, Fernando ESP 111 22 Gabashvili, Teimuraz RUS 112 23 Pavel, Andrei ROM 113 24 (SE) Cleared 25 (SE) Cleared 26 (WC) 27 (WC) 28 (WC) 29 (Q) 30 (Q) 31 (Q) 32 (Q)
Alternates
1. Economidis, Konstantinos GRE 120 IN 2. Bogdanovic, Alex GBR 123 IN 3. Pashanski, Boris SRB 124 IN 4. Kubot, Lukasz POL 125 IN 5. Bozoljac, Ilia SRB 126 6. Navarro Pastor, Ivan ESP 128 7. Querrey, Sam USA 130 8. Hartfield, Diego ARG 131 8. Zib, Tomas CZE 133 10. De Voest, Rik RSA 135 11. Fraile, Gorka ESP 136 12. Carlsen, Kenneth DEN 137 13. Gremelmayr, Denis GER 138 14. Peya, Alexander AUT 139 15. Hernandez, Oscar ESP 142 16. Russell, Michael USA 144 17. Vinciguerra, Andreas SWE 146 18. Luzzi, Federico ITA 147 19. Wang, Yeu-Tzuoo TPE 148 20. Capdeville, Paul CHI 149
Really good that Alex is playing several ATP events so early in the year.....it will be a good test of how much he has improved.....hope it is the start of a good year for him.
stevemcqueen wrote: Al will have to rehash his schedule! Melbourne to wrexham to Delray beach to Bergamo would be an insane amount of travel!
If you include Chennai aswell, it's going to be 4 continents in 4 weeks !! Maybe we can get Alex to do a blog, "around the world in 28 days" !
He's definately planning to play a lot more ATPs this year so I expect that if he does miss one of those tourneys, it'll be Wrexham. I can't see him turning down a DA into Delray Beach and given that he'll already be in the States, he'll probably enter the Dallas 50K challenger over there instead of Bergamo.
RedCabbage wrote: Realistically he's not going to be particularly busy during the second half of any of the ATP weeks so he should have plenty of time to travel.
I've heard from Alex: he says that he's playing ATP Sydney qualies aswell as Aussie Open quals, for more match practise. Means that there's also a good chance of Mackin doing the same.
Then instead of playing the Wrexham challenger, Alex is going for the Heinbroon 100K+H on indoor carpet in Germany.
He's definately going to Delray Beach so will be playing the US ATPs and challengers n February to March
So, if he qualifies in Sydney and wins a couple of rounds, he'll miss out on the AO. Still, I think it is a legitimate strategy - he'd surely be happy with 3rd round points and cash of an ATP tour event. I'm suprised he isn't doing Wrexham, though. I know it is only a small challenger, but his record in GB challengers is so good that he will probably win more points there than Heilbronn.
Also, in terms of scheduling, staying in the US makes far more sense, but I thought he might come back to defend his title in Bergamo, where he did so well last year. Anyway, if he stays healthy he has plenty of opportinity to defend the pints he needs to defend.....
I'm suprised he isn't doing Wrexham, though. I know it is only a small challenger, but his record in GB challengers is so good that he will probably win more points there than Heilbronn.
i think this is part of the 'new' boggo, he wants to try and push up and will go for the harder events (as we saw in ukraine/slovakia earlier), it will surely benefit him in the longer run to be up against sluiter types every match, i dont think alex could play like tispsi and get to the top 100 on ukzbeki challengers then switch to bigger events
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Madeline wrote: Above typo brings forth a beautiful vision of Boggo manfully defending a row of glasses of beer!
sorry about the typo; perhaps it was a Freudian slip. I'd certainly defend my pints fiercley! Anyway, I'm looking forward to the start of the season, hopefully Al and Josh can do thge business....not so sure about Jamie Baker though I have never seen him play. I think the LTA like him because he is well brought up, polite, works hard and generally says the right thing. But does he have the ability to cut it in the worlds top 100?