It's a shame to hear that Josh has withdrawn However, India is a tough place to compete (sorry Arka) and many players have had unhappy experiences there. Boggo withdrew from an LTA tour there in 2003 and hasn't been back since. I think it's the off-court stuff rather than any on-court issues. Lots of players are worried about getting Delhi Belly and so are worried about eating any of the local food and they have to bring all their own water.

It's probably best for Josh to recharge his batteries in Britain and prepare for the Wrexham challenger. The courts down under wouldn't have particularly suited him anyway

It wouldn't have suited him because he likes a fast court ! He has also been serve-volleying quite a lot lately, did so at Wimbledon and US Open qualies.

The Rebound Ace is Melbourne is quite slow and bouncy. They say they're speeding it up for this year but they've said that in previous years and Hewitt complained then that it was still the same speed. It's difficult to serve-volley effectively on rebound ace because even when you hit a decent approach, the ball slows down off the court and due to the bounce, it sits up quite nicely for the opponent to pass. It's part of the reason why Henman hasn't been further than the last 16 down under and why Jonny Marray has struggled in the qualies.

If Josh played mainly as a baseliner down under, the courts wouldn't have particularly suited his attacking style because of the speed and bounce but he could still have succeeded. I'm just saying that it wouldn't have suited him as much as the hard courts of the US Open.

Josh was brought up in Oz but not all hard courts there are rebound ace, only in Sydney and Melbourne. Elsewhere, I'm told that they have more tarmacy hard courts and this classic clay stuff

Bladetiger wrote:

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Yeah your quite right, was talking out my arse!

On same topic (Sort of) Jonny Marray is struggling with his shoulder, for more details see www.jonnymarray.net

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LOL I'd read your 'India' as 'Czech Republic' too. (not that easy to do, you wouldn't think!)

That's bad news about Jonny. Bloomers has been having shoulder problems too, and I see you're saying Peter Lundgren has as well. As someone with chronic shoulder problems, I can't imagine anything much worse than an 18 hour flight for flaring things up.

What with Boggo going down tamely in Sydney to someone he should have beaten (notwithstanding his excellent win against Delic), Josh going home, Lundgren not there to inspire our boys and Bloomers/Jonny both having shoulder problems, what looked like it might have a chance of being a very exciting AO qualifying tournament for us is suddenly looking a bit grim.

(OT) Btw, when I updated the top 25 table on Jonny's site in the early hours of this morning, I also updated the ranking and 'where's Jonny' sections too. I'm happy to carry on doing that if you want me to - easy enough when I'm going in there anyway and have easy access to all the data. I'll leave the top 18 table to you though - that's going to be a nightmare if he gets a good result and you have to move lots of other results down to insert it.

-- Edited by steven at 13:28, 2007-01-08

Verkerk has pulled out and Muller takes his place in Main Draw...this means

Boggo is up to 10th seed and Baker needs one more withdrawal before draw in the early hours of this morning to make it...fingers crossed!

ultimateshedman wrote:

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Can someone fly over to Australia and kick Rafa hard in his sore groin so that he has to instantly pull out

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Down, Arka, down! He's only joking!