Challenger Tennis Week Five In Review

Subtitled: Seriously – How Freaking Awesome Were My Previews? (A: Very.)

I know, I know. Challenger what now? For a site with “Challenger” in the name, I’ve sure written very little about them this week. I’ve been suffering from a bad case of Futurebrain (much worse than bed head, I’m afraid), but will be back to yammering daily about the challenger circuit soon. In the meantime, will you settle for this weekly summary instead? You have no choice, really. I’m just asking to be polite.

But seriously – how freaking awesome were my previews? (please see answer, above.) Let’s take a look at what actually transpired in this past week’s three events, and match it up to what I said would happen beforehand. This will be an exercise whose worth can be computed only on a scale of my own awesomeness. Ready? Doesn’t matter:

Courmayeur

I wrote:

“I’m pleased to see Lithuanian #2 (behind “Richard” Berankis, of course) Laurynas Grigelis has made it through qualifying…I would tell anyone who listened back then that Laury played well above his then-521 ranking. Less than 11 months later, my sentiment has been somewhat borne out as Grigelis will likely enter the Top 400 next week.”

So guess what? Turns out Grigelis made it all the way to the quarterfinals, and his ranking will be at a WATCH-worthy366 (or so) when the new rankings come out in about five minutes. You see? I’m smarter than even I thought I was! (Hard to imagine, I know, but it’s true.)

Grigelis, at right, with some other Lithuanian dude, laughing in awe re: my amazing intelligence

Then I wrote:

“A possible quarterfinal in the top section here pits Bolelli vs. fifth seed (and 2011 CT PtW) Benoit Paire… But Matthias Bachinger will probably beat them both anyway. Because that’s just the kind of thing he does.”

So what happened? Well, Bachinger did beat Paire, but couldn’t beat Bolelli because Grigelis had already done so. *feels doubly vindicated* He then beat Big Grig in the quarters for good measure, finally losing to Nicolas Mahut in the semis.

Matthias Bachinger, at left, with friend Daniel Brands, mocking you for doubting my prescience

All the seeds on the bottom half of the draw made the quarters, which is amazing because those are the only players I even mentioned in my preview. Never mind that I was short of time and mentioning the seeded entrants was the most obvious way to do the fastest preview possible. The important takeaway here is that I mentioned four players, and all four of them made the quarterfinals. Remark-a-balls. (Let the official record show those players were: Martin Klizan, Gilles Muller, Jerzy Janowicz and Olivier Rochus.)

Mahut went on to beat Muller 7-6(4) 6-4 in the final, which is fine because I mentioned him too.

All results!

Kazan

I wrote about top seed Conor Niland’s dodgy lunch. Then he withdru with the flew.  Coincidence?  I think not.

I wrote about there possibly being an upset in the Marius Copil vs. three seed Alexander Kudryavtsev match. And then he went on to win the whole damn tournament (he beat fourth-seeded Andi Beck 7-6(6) 6-4)! I mean, how’s that for an upset?! Nevermind that that’s not what I predicted, specifically. Or that I bunched his upset possibility with the fates of two other combatants, neither of whom came through as I’d insinuated they might. The point here is: I’m awesome. (Remember?)

Marius Copil, the Romanian Roddick, a long time ago in a completely different tournament

Great Britain F1 Glasgow | Day Two

I one hundred percent think that therapists should send their patients to Futures tournaments. I mean, nothing higher than Futures, since we all know that eventually, tennis causes alcoholism, but Futures… five hours of that today and I’m zen as fuck. Calm as a cucumber.
Might as well enjoy it, since when I return to Queen’s I’ll return to shaking and crying in the practice court bushes any time Roddick approaches the net.

My first match of the day was Mathieu Rodrigues (FRA) vs Kenny De Schepper (FRA). Uhh, I don’t know what’s happened to the French lately, but their names have gotten weird as hell. What ever happened to names like Simon, Monfils, Benneteau, Gasquet? They don’t even look French. The players I mean, their faces. It’s all very confusing. Confusing, and sexy.
I turned round at some point to see Eaton win his match behind me. I wasn’t even aware that he was playing, so I felt guilty and pleased simultaneously. Yet interestingly enough, I don’t think that counts as a guilty pleasure.
One to think about…

 

Mathieu Rodrigues. Like Verdasco, but much more accessible/corruptible.

Similar to Verdasco, I didn’t have very high hopes for this boy. Originally I did, but when I arrived and he was immediately 0-2 down, I figured today maybe just wasn’t his day. His somewhat less attractive countryman was stealing the show, and I don’t even know how. Because I don’t know much about tennis. I’m not going to lie, the match as a whole just wasn’t very exciting, and if it wasn’t two French players, I probably would have just walked away. Rodrigues became a profanity mumbling, racquet throwing fool and I left halfway through the second set to see Evans.

Also, I don’t mean to sound like a total girl, but I really do want to stress that those photographs do not do his face justice.
He had dark brown eyes the size of MY FISTS.
Anway, back to the tennis…

Evans was clearly too angry to bother giving anyone a match to watch. He powered through this like (…a racoon came into my head. He was much more powerful than a racoon), basically like someone who did not want to have his time wasted by Sablinsky and his mediocre attempts to beat him. I did love the fact that despite being 6-1 3-0 up, he still got all pissy with himself. Even when he’s pleased, he sounds like he’s so happy he has to go kneecap someone.

Special Guest Contributor Alert! (aka Great Britain F1 Glasgow Preview)

My beloved readership: due to the fact that I’ll be racing around in a panic trying to get everything done ahead of my Wednesday-scheduled drive to Florida, not to mention the fact that I’ll actually be driving to Florida from Wednesday to Friday (blizzard permitting), I won’t be around here to coddle you with content in the way to which you’ve already clearly become accustomed.

So it pleases me greatly to announce that – by way of guilt-ridden compensation - I’ve enlisted the help of not just one, but two special guest contributors for the week!  Of course, I only have clearance to announce one of them at present.  The other is a not-so-closely-held secret (for now).

In the meantime, allow me to introduce the special guest-contributing stylings of Christina Marie (please hold your applause ’til the end of this post, OK?  I mean really, there’s no need to interrupt my flow with your childishly premature exclamations right now), a tennis maven and photographer extraordinaire who’ll be providing courtside coverage of the Great Britain F1 Futures event in Glasgow all the livelong week.

The $15K tournament, one of only two 15K’s on the calendar for the week (the other being China – I’m still looking for correspondents there), promises to be a most excellent event.  Uladzimir Ignatik has hopped a plane fresh (?) from his quarterfinal appearance in the Sao Paulo Challenger to be the top seed here, joining the remaining seeds Alexandre Sidorenko, Michael Ryderstedt, Harri Heliovaara, Dan Evans, Jamie Baker, Juho Paukku and Mathieu Rodrigues, in that order.

Iggy Plays…

But you may not see any of those people here (well, maybe Mathieu Rodrigues), as my special guest has been known to favor the French at times.  But she’s got the green light to cover whatever she damn well pleases.  I don’t see any of you going out and getting special Glaswegian artists to please you with content free of charge, after all.  So please be nice.  You may whet your appetite with Tuesday’s order of play here.

Oh, and you may now applaud.

Sao Paulo Challenger Quarterfinal Results

The final match has just been completed, and here are your Sao Paulo Challenger quarterfinal results:

[1] Ricardo Mello d Juan-Pablo Brzezicki 6-2 6-0

[7] Federico Delbonis d [3] Joao Souza 7-6(5) 5-7 6-4

Adrian Menendez-Maceiras d Uladzimir Ignatik 7-6(5) 7-6(1)

[Q] Rafael Camilo d Thomas Fabbiano 6-4 6-4

Save for Ignatik v Menendez, which was not streamed, I was able to watch all of the above matches and will be back with full recaps (and smashingly illustrative screencaps) later on today.

The Delbo-Souza match was… interesting…

Stay tuned!

Sao Paulo Challenger Quarterfinals Preview!

Good (time-appropriate greeting) everyone! So, I have a question: are you as sick of reading these damn Sao Paulo previews as I am of writing them? Let’s just say, for the sake of this article, that you aren’t. Is that OK? Will that work for you? From my end, well…my Sao Paulo Bureau Chief is on the lam, he’s in the wind, and – worst of all – he doesn’t even exist. So you’ll have to settle for my last-minute cobbled-together preview instead. Here are today’s Bradesco Prime Cup Sao Paulo Challenger quarterfinal match-ups:

[7] Federico Delbonis vs. [3] Joao Souza – The two have met once previously, with Delbo winning 7-6(8) 6-2 on clay at the Braunschweig Challenger in June of 2009. In other news, I love prepositional phrase strings! And brown is my favourite-coloured schweig. Just in case you planned on rewarding my reluctant, previewing diligence with the gift of schweig.

J-Wow is the higher seed and the higher ranked (#111 to #160) and the 22 year-old Brazilian will also have the home crowd in his favour. Therefore I pick Delbonis to win in two tough sets.

[1] Ricardo Mello vs. Juan-Pablo Brzezicki – Wow. This match is really the immoveable object meets the irresistible force. Allow me to explain: Brzezicki, the 28 year-old Argentine, has a 3-1 head-to-head edge over the top seed (although they haven’t met since 2008, but Juan-Pablo’s won the last three in any case); but the 30 year-old Brazilian has never lost at this event – hell, he just lost his first set yesterday to Tsung-Hua Yang – and he’s looked good in the two matches I’ve seen him play here. I think Mello gets off the snide here and advances to the semis in straights.