GB Player Watch

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Colin Fleming and Ross Hutchins have reached the final of the Malaysia Open by beating No. 1 seeds Frystenberg and Matkowski.

Also both Laura Robson and Heather Watson have made it through opening qualifying rounds at China Open.

Well done to all

Oh dear, not the best day for Laura. I'd say 6-1 6-2 was a bit of a smashing.

I know these decisions are probably taken in advance, but I do wonder whether she'd have been better served going to Washington, where she'd have been a Top 4 seed.

I thought that too but Carlsbad is a WTA Premier whereas Washington is not. She must have fancied a run at Carlsbad so she could get more ranking points. She has to defend a shed load of points over the next few months from the USO 4th round and the final of a WTA event.

There was an interesting article I read about 2 or 3 months ago, one which is unfortunately been taken down becuase of a flaw in the calculations involving seeded players losing their first round, when the Bucharest(250) and Barcelona (500) tournaments went head to head.

For instance Nadal is such a firm favourite on clay, his estimated number of points in Barcelona was above the 250 he would have got attending Bucharest. But for someone, like say Lukas Rosol who won the Bucharest tournament, it makes sense to attend Bucharest than Barcelona, as he would likely run into someone highly seeded pretty soon in the tournament and lose (or at least the percentages would point towards that)

If she had been seeded 4th say in Washington, she could have had Wickmayer> Watson> Cornet> as a possible run, whilst Carlsbad sees you run into top seeds pretty quickly.

ryan86 wrote:I know these decisions are probably taken in advance, but I do wonder whether she'd have been better served going to Washington, where she'd have been a Top 4 seed.

To be fair, Laura has a pretty decent record against very good players, and has tended to underperform against players she should beat. Heck, she beat Kvitova in the AO, so this looks to be just a case of her having a poor day and Petra a good one.

Go Evans...

That is a pretty tough field the challenger tour is a shark tank. I recognize a lot of those players.

I see Johanna Konta beat World No. 41 Hsieh Su-Wei in Vancouver as well. Hsieh (or is it Su-Wei) has been quite rotten this year, only once managing to win back-to-back matches.

I do tend to recognise a lot of the American Challenger tour players as the streams are on around this time of night.

A disappointing defeat for James Ward in Vancouver overnight. He lost his Second Round match against Australia's Greg Jones 6-1 7-6.

Dan Evans looks set to climb to his highest ever ranking following his exploits in Vancouver. He plays Olivier Rochus tomorrow in a quarter-final match and regardless of the result looks set to climb a few more places in the rankings. Currently, he stands ranked at No.248 with his highest ever ranking being 247.

Dan Cox is looking for back to back 15k wins too. Set to move up over 100 places as it stands right now.

Konta is certainly heading in the right direction for top 100. The more DA we can get into the slams the better.

Things are actually moving in the right direction for the women, obviously the loss of Baltacha and Keothavong from the upper reaches isn't going to help, but also Sam Murray will debut into the top 200 next week at around 190, and Tara Moore did the same thing for the first time a week or so ago. Hopefully they can keep the momentum going.

Dan Evans wins the first set against Rochus.

...and 2-0 up serving in the 2nd.
Great opportunity for Evans!

Evans wins 6-4 6-2 and will play either Bobby Reynolds or Frank Dancevic

I'm sure Dancevic is a favourite of yours after his dismantling of Granollers in the Davis Cup earlier this year.

Lol, absolutely Ryan ... That said I didn't mind him beating Monaco earlier today. Great win for Evans, hopefully this week can give him the motivation to continue an attack on the top 100, talent wise he's not lacking at all.

I think he'll play Bobby Reynolds around 2-3 am this morning. If he wins, he'll reach the top 200.

Evans takes the first set 6-3, which was in part a miracle because for the first half of the set he was aflicted with a severe case of the Laura Robson's.

Evans beats Reynolds in straight sets 6-3 6-2 and will now play the local boy Vasek Pospisil in the final. A large haul of points heading Evans way.

JoKo has made a final in Vancouver too!!

Which she has won 6-4 6-2.

Evans not off to a great start. Lost the first set 6-0, scoring 5 points in the whole set. I'd wonder if it was actually more than 10 minutes.

EDIT: And then breaks Pospisil to love in the 1st game.
EDIT2: Evans wins the 2nd set 6-1

Evans loses 7-5 in the final set. He had 3 match points, but it would be wrong to say he wasted them since Vasek hit 3 unreturnable serves.

Still a good weeks work for Dan Evans as he has now climbed to No.194 ranked in the world which is his highest ever ranking.

Good for JoKo, bad luck for Evans but both have done very well this week indeed.

Good week for both.  

James Ward out again in Aptos having gained a lucky loser. Not sure if he'll be disappointed as he appeared at one point to call the tournament a shambles. Dodgy ballkids, it appears dodgy line calls though one can't check these things and somebody cutting the grass nearby for most of the second set.

It also appears Murray's just like us, watching stuttering online streams.

https://twitter.com/danielvallverdu/status/364181531041857536/photo/1

Dan Evans good run of form continues though as he wins his First Round match in Aptos.

Jimmy Wang takes the first set 6-2 against Dan Evans in the Second Round of the Challenger event in Aptos.

As expected. Wang can qualify for majors, Evans cannot.

The Special Juan wrote:As expected.  Wang can qualify for majors, Evans cannot.

An early break for Evans though in the second set.

Evans still throws in these incredible service games where he loses his serve in about the time Nadal takes between points. 

Evans takes the second set 6-4 and we go into a third set.

I'd love to stay up for Evans and Flurray but I'm running on empty now. Let's hope I awaken to good news!!

Evans breaks in the first game of the third set.

Evans wins, breaking Wang in the final game to take it 6-3. Move him up 2 places in the rankings, past Josselin Ouanna and Facundo Bagnis.

Evo should beat Pella. It'll be tougher than that farce of a match at Queen's of course but I think he can do it.

Evans won 7-5 6-1 against Pella

In other non Dan Evans related news (a run which will take him to the cusp of British number 2, just inside the top 180 as it stands), we see Dan Cox reach another 15k final (his 3rd futures final in as many weeks and he's won the other two.) He's already set to move to number 4 (from 9!) on the British list a week Monday even if he doesn't win.

Also, Kyle Edmund has reached a 15k final in Italy and after two 10k wins in the last 12 months, he looks to win his first one at this slightly higher level. Olly Golding also looks to be in form, reaching his 4th 10k final in the last year, and hopefully he can finish this off with his first win.

I appreciate it doesn't seem like much, but Murray aside, this is probably the best week for British men's tennis for sheer consistency of performance and accumulation of ranking points. The lower men's game offers big points offerings for making finals and winning events compared to the women's rankings that offers a more even spread.

All these guys are moving in the right direction toward getting out of the futures tour and moving into getting consistent direct acceptances to challenger events.

Kyle won his event, and will probably move to about 340 in the rankings in a week or so's time. All moving in the right direction for the 18 year old.

Dan and Olly were both beaten, but good weeks nonetheless.

When would Evans get DA's to 250 as well? But would be better playing Challenger, up to 100 points if you win, only get 90 if you make the semis of a 250.

100th seems to be a good cut-off between Main Tour and Challenger. If you are top 100, you play the ATP events, below that Challengers. If Evans wins tonight, he'll go above James Ward.

Evans is about to start

Evans takes the first on a tiebreak despite serving for it and having set points at 5-4. Hopefully that can spur him on to take the match now.

It was his seventh set point when he finally won.

There was a bit controversy on one of the deuces in the 5-4 game. Evans hit a volley that landed near the sideline. The umpire was making sure Evans didn't touch the net and Dustov's position meant that the line judge couldn't see the ball bounce. Dustov thought the ball was out and the crowd were vociferous that the ball was out, so much so, that lines judge thought she must have made a mistake and so they replayed the point.

In the end, it doesn't really matter. If it was out, Dustov won that game. If it was in, Evans won the set.

Heather Watson just won a tricky qualifier against Schiavone in the 3rd set.

Sorry for the triple post, Evans wins the 2nd set 6-3 and is now the British No.2

Another runners-up cheque for Evans in another match where he had match points.

Dan Cox won his 5th futures event in the space of about 2.5 months today.

Interesting to see if the can keep this sort of form going into challenger events, as I'm guessing that's where he'll be heading pretty soon as he'll move up to about 260-270.

Although it's probably true that some of those points in GB futures are quite cheap, his consistency recently has been incredibly impressive.

A difficult year for both Watson and Robson. Both out in the first round in Japan - where Heather was defending champion. Watson will presumably now be well outside the top 100 and Laura is outside the top 40. Hope Heather can get her fitness and confidence back for next year.

Tough for Heather - she really needs to start again from next season and build her way back up through qualies and ITF tournaments.

What do people make of Laura's results? I don't really understand them at all. It seems ridiculous at her age and ranking to claim she is a "big match player", and yet clearly over the year, her slam results are much better than her tour results. Is it more a nerves thing when she's up against players on tour she really should be beating, or fitness for the week-in, week-out tournament slog or what?