GBF1 - Sheffield - 2007.

Sheddie · administrator

RE: GBF1 - Sheffield - 2007.

Sheddie · administrator

According to Neil Harman, Paul Annacone was at Sheffield this week for the qualies, looking for signs of promising talent.

Good news for Slabba and Rushby then

I'll have to ask Slabba if he's spoken to Annacone.

Here's the article, it's an interesting read:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,5205-2536107,00.html

Salmon · Tennis legend

USM, I agree with you on that one. Morgan seems the one who is most likely to do it first.

He won a Futures when he was ranked outside the top 750 and that isn't very common. That really shows that he is capable of tennis of a much higher standard.
It will be interesting to see if he goes for Challenger qualies once again or not. He did very well to qualify in Rimini (a 50K) last year and if he takes his ranking into the top 500, he'll start getting seeded for them.

I don't see anyone else other than Childs and Morgan doing it this year.
Slabba may need to wait till early 2008. He seems to have the potential, but he really needs to win back to back matches like he did this week. One advantage of having a rubbish year is that you don't defend much next time, so you never know, he may surprise us all by doing it this year itself.

steven · Tennis legend

The thing about Morgan Phillips is that he's doing it the hard way, Futures-wise, playing in Spain mostly where Futures are very tough.

I had a look at the rankings in detail at one point last year and noticed that there were less Spaniards than Brits in the 200-350 range. What this suggests to me is that those tough Spanish Futures (even the 10Ks tend to be strong) are a much better preparation for playing at Challenger level than, say, the Futures in the UK.

Thus, when the Spanish players get up to Challenger level, it's not nearly so much of a shock and they tend to start doing well in them right away, which is the only plausible explanation for them not sticking around in the 200-350 range for long, unlike our players.

So, I'm reasonably confident that Morgan being ranked around 600 based on Futures in southern Europe is equivalent to someone who plays GB Futures all the time being ranked about 400 and if he continues to improve, he should be capable of holding his own at Challenger level before too long.