The WATCH List – Special VD Edition! Who’s Achieved Their Career High This Week?

No, you goons – this is not a special edition for those who’ve contracted certain romance-related diseases. Rather, it’s a special Valentines Day edition of my weekly list detailing Who’s Achieved Their Career Highs (although some would call Valentines Day itself a romance-related disease. I abstain from comment on the grounds that it might incriminate me).

So what makes this Valentines Day edition so special? Nothing really. Only that’s it’s made with love and dedicated to you, dear reader. *gags on sappy sentiment* Also, I’ve added an “age” column. You’re welcome. You know the rules by now, right? Only those ranked #80-350 make my list, unless I’m feeling particularly in an inclusive mood (who knows? On Valentines Day, you may get lucky). For those Titans of the Top 80, you must confer with our friends over at Shank Tennis.

All right! Enough of this tomfoolery. Let’s get to this week’s WATCH List!

Player	Age	NATION	New High	Prev High	Why?
Grigor Dimitrov	19.75	BULGARIA	84	85	Q’ed, R1 R’dam
Benoit Paire	21.75	FRANCE	120	136	Q’ed, R2 R’dam
Alexander Kudryavtsev	25.25	RUSSIA	141	147	SF Bergamo
Tim Smyczek	23.10	USA	158	168	QF San Jose
Matthias Bachinger	23.90	GERMANY	161	163	R2 Bergamo
Robert Farah	23.25	COLOMBIA	183	184	Q’ed, R1 San Jose
Jurgen Zopp	22.90	ESTONIA	198	211	SF Bergamo
Sebastian Rieschick	24.99	GERMANY	225	228	R2 Quimper
Facundo Bagnis	20.95	ARGENTINA	231	238	Q’ed, R1 Brazil
Andres Molteni	22.92	ARGENTINA	236	246	QF Colombia F2
Alexander Lobkov	20.33	RUSSIA	252	253	Others lost points
Fritz Wolmarans	24.93	S. AFRICA	254	255	Others lost points
Amir Weintraub	24.42	ISRAEL	255	259	R2 Quimper
Phillip Bester	22.35	CANADA	260	268	R2 Caloundra
Clement Reix	27.35	FRANCE	265	270	R2 Quimper
Karan Rastogi	24.35	INDIA	284	328	W Cambodia F2
Javier Marti	19.10	SPAIN	295	308	R2 Spain F5
Kenny de Schepper	23.70	FRANCE	297	370	F Quimper
Ludovic Walter	28.10	FRANCE	304	315	R2 Quimper

Notable things to note:

The average age of this week’s WATCHers is 23 years old and 4 months. The youngest player achieving a career high today is Javier Marti at 19 and 1 month, while the oldest is former Duke University standout (two-time ITA All-American) Ludovic Walter at 28 and 1 month (warning: all age numbers are achieved by rounding off, for the most part, and are thus approximations).

Ludovic Walter quimping it up at the Quimper Challenger in France

Walter is an interesting case, having not even achieved a pro ranking until after his college days were over in 2006 at age 23. I suspect that, with college ball being an increasingly viable route for top talents and the age of the Top 100 skewing ever older, we’ll start to see many more players in the “Ludovic Walter” mold in the future.

Anyway, congrats to all who’ve achieved career highs this week. And to all the rest of you, I hope you achieve various highs of your own on this Valentines Day.

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Totally Ozsome: Australian Open Men’s Qualifying Day One Wrap-up

So.  Hello.  I’m pretty sure it’s not me you’re looking for either.  And I know I’m supposed to be driving to Florida right now, but the Northeast is getting slammed with snow – bamboozled by blizzard, we are! – so I’m (Tom) delayed for one more day. Which means, despite my procuring of the finest guest-hosting talents (and they are doing a spectacular job), you are stuck with me for one more day. I don’t know what to do with myself, other than sully my site with more of my words. Therefore, I proudly present to you my Australian Open men’s qualifying day one wrap-up – cabin fever edition:

I was able to wake up in the middle of the night and watch the livestream of the John Millman v Sebastian Rieschick match as well as the Greg Jones v Olivier Patience contest. Then I fell asleep again (sorry Gooch!) Turns out that Greg and the Mailman were the only Aussies to come good out of the twelve who played yesterday.

That’s right, two wins out of twelve. Maverick Banes, Matt Reid, Chris Guccione, Sean Berman, Sam Groth, James Duckworth, Ben Mitchell, Luke Saville, James Lemke, and Brydan Klein all lost. Ouch. All Ozzed up, and no place to go. In fairness, Mitchell’s effort (some of which I saw) was superb, taking top seeded Blaz Kavcic to 4-6 in the third set. And Saville lost to a red hot Nicola Mahut. 

Benny Mitchell – Will He Escape From Full Screen Mode?

So I’m especially glad to have seen the rare instances of Aussome success in all their glory. And they were glorious indeed. If ever a match could be called “classic John Millman”, this match vs. Rieschick was the one. The Mailman seemed dogged by the conditions early, and easily distracted by “fans” with highly questionable etiquette. His shots were landing short in the court, and his opponent was taking those short balls and teeing off, making more than he missed.

Thus, the amiable Queenslander found himself down a set and a break, with the burly German serving for the match, when he was granted a rain-delay reprieve. After an hour or so break, Milkman came out raring to go, a noticeable spring in his step that was absent pre-precip. Maybe he enjoyed some caffeine during his break. I offer this as evidence for my hypothesis:

Meanwhile, Rieschick was nowhere to be found, and ambled out onto the court a good five minutes or so after John did. When play resumed, Mailman overcame match point, shoddy line calls, and dodgy inter-game spectator migrations to break twice and take the second set 7-5. Rieschick also could no longer find the court – that helped, too.

The third set opened with three straight breaks, Sebastian settled a bit more into his game after an extended walkabout during the previous frame’s conclusion.

The WATCH List – Who’s Achieved Their Career Highs?

OK. So every Monday, going back a long time, I’ve enjoyed combing through the newly released ATP world rankings to see who’s achieved their new career highs, usually on the backs of a good/great performance the week before.  I’ve occasionally shared this list from week to week with a few of my tennis junkie friends through emails and the like, but now that I have this site I thought it’d be nice to share it with you fine internet folk.

Unfortunately, right when I went to do this, I saw that our friends from Shank Tennis had just published a similarly themed article, complete with my snappy WATCH (Who’s Achieved Their Career High?) acronym in their title.  What to do?  It totally looks like I’m stealing ideas from our Shanky colleagues here, but I swear I’ve been doing this for a while and just wanted to make it public in the new year. *throws self on mercy of the jurgement court*   The best I can do is hope my friends back up my assertions in the comments section, sheepishly link to the Shank Tennis article, and hope they don’t shank me.  Haha, life is so absurd.  (or maybe it’s just me.)

Anyway, without further ado (’cause we’ve had plenty of ado already), here is today’s list.  Wait!  More ado: I arbitrarily start this list at #80 in the world and go up to #350, just because that’s about the range in which most Challenger Tour players are found.  If I’m leaving out a fave of yours, make yer own damn list (heh).  So here, finally, is the WATCH list; this is who’s achieved their career highs this week: 

Player	NATIONALITY	New High	(Previous High)
Adrian Mannarino	FRANCE	80	(83)
Ivan Dodig	CROATIA	82	(86)
Alexandre Kudryavtsev	RUSSIA	149	(156)
Milos Raonic	CANADA	153	(155)
Vincent Millot	FRANCE	161	(170)
Yuichi Sugita	JAPAN	166	(180)
Augustin Gensse	FRANCE	190	(199)
Nikola Ciric	SERBIA	197	(198)
David Goffin	BELGIUM	205	(228)
Gregoire Burquier	FRANCE	220	(233)
Sebastian Rieschick	GERMANY	232	(238)
Facundo Bagnis	ARGENTINA	240	(242)
Amir Weintraub	ISRAEL	270	(278)
Clement Reix	FRANCE	273	(277)
Thomas Fabbiano	ITALY	277	(305)
Rafael Camilo	BRAZIL	306	(433)

Great looking week for France, eh?  Five players at new career highs (not even counting Michael Llodra, who also is WATCH-worthy at #22).  Most of this is attributable to the Noumea Challenger, a French-territorial event in which Millot, Burquier, Gensse, and Reix all thrived.  Fabbiano and Camilo appear courtesy of standout showings at the Sao Paulo Challenger.

So that’s this week’s WATCH list done with.  I plan to make it a weekly Monday feature, assuming I don’t get shanked. :-0

Here Comes The Nouméa – Not Like The Oldméa

With Sao Paulo rained out for the day, and the forecast looking dicey for the rest of the week in New Caledonia, it was good that one of the challenger events was actually able to fit some tennis into their week.  The first day’s play went off without a hitch (well, unless you were Benoit Paire – then there were plenty of hitches).  Here are the results, as expertly cut and pasted by moi from the INTERNATIONAUX DE NOUVELLE-CALEDONIE 2011 webpage itself:

Simple messieurs, premier tour

[3] G Muller (LUX) b D Udomchoke (THA) 46 75 76(5)
V Millot (FRA) b [4] M Gicquel (FRA) 63 75
S Rieschick (GER) b [5] B Paire (FRA) 61 61
[6] J Ouanna (FRA) b [Q] M Yani (USA) 63 64
[7] D Guez (FRA) b [Q] F Wolmarans (RSA) 61 64
[8] S Vagnozzi (ITA) b [WC] N N’godrela (FRA) 64 61
P Cervenak (SVK) b R Jouan (FRA) 76(8) 63
[WC] C Reix (FRA) b [WC] C Brezac (FRA) 64 76(2)
F Cipolla (ITA) b M Viola (ITA) 75 64
R de Voest (RSA) b [Q] D Meffert (GER) 76(1) 76(1)
[Q] A Weintraub (ISR) b O Patience (FRA) 16 63 63
G Burquier (FRA) b L Rochette (FRA) 63 62

I’m still waiting on the results for the more complicated messieurs, but those are scores for the simple ones at least. 

A lot of surprises there: that Gilles Muller was so extended by Danai Udomchoke, for one.  But at least Gilles deLUXe actually won.  4th and 5th seeds Marc Gicquel and Benoit Paire were not so fortunate.  I suppose it’s less shocking that Paire went down to Sebastian Rieschick, who is a quite capable player himself.  And, as has been recounted here, Benoit is entirely capable of imploding.  Plus Vincent Millot, that fire hydrant-shaped Frenchman, is only ranked 50 spots lower than his 33 year-old countryman at this point. 

 Benoit udomchokes another one away

So actually, now that I look at it – I’m not surprised at all.  I take it all back.  I’d erase the above paragraph, but then I’d have to write something else, and I’m far too lazy to do that.  So we’re all stuck with it.

All the qualifiers bit the French island dust, save for Amir Weintraub, who’s put together a nice little run of wins lately.  I am surprised (no, really) that Fritz got blitzed so badly, but that’s about it.

Anyway, there’s your update.  I hope you like it, because we might not have another for quite some time.  In the meantime, I’ll be blathering about Challenger tennis players who’ve been making inroads into ATP 250’s.  But you’ll have to find such blather in a different post.

Preview: Nouméa ATP Challenger (New Caledonia, French territory)

[Editor’s note: it’s only the second day of the year, and already I’m overtaxed/lazy.  So I outsourced my Noumea preview to friend, contributor, and general tennistico Jonathan Artman aka @jonnyboy613 on the Twitter.  I hope you enjoy his art(man)icle – please leave your praise/blame in the comments.]

 

The first week of the brand spanking new 2011 tennis season begins for the Challenger players in Nouméa, a French owned island which is actually nowhere near France. This beautiful island, part of New Caledonia, is part of the Pacific Ocean territories, and is just a short boat (or cruise ride, if you will), from Australia.

Whilst this mysterious island is still owned by France, the French have gradually released power over the island in favour of New Caledonia itself. Regardless, French is still the official language; in fact, less than 1 % of its inhabitants reported that they don’t know how to speak la Française. Now you may be wondering the significance of the geography of Nouméa; it is quite a fascinating place and like no other; it appears on the map nowhere near its genuine owners and the island even has its own New Caledonia football team, a part of FIFA since 2004. Its population is relatively small, at just under an estimated 250,000. The Nouméa tennis championships are not just clouded in mystery, it possesses some genuinely amusing stories, too. In 2009, the island suffered a deluge of highly unusual rain, which quite literally forced the 2009 doubles tournament to be “Cancelled Due to Rain”.

Rather like Cancun, the scenery is nothing short of spectacular, as is rather evident by the above image. This may lend the destination to a pure holiday resort, where professionals can play a bit of tennis during the week too. Far from it – the tournament has a proud heritage and Gilles Simon, once a Top 10 player in the ATP rankings, is a double champion, having won the tournament twice consecutively back in 2005 and 2006. Florian Mayer, the German, currently ranked 37 in the World, was the champion in New Caledonia last year, and crushed his final opponent Flavio Cipolla of Italy 6-3, 6-0. The Italian himself is not a stranger to success in Nouméa; he will have fond memories of his success 3 years ago in 2008 where he fought off the improving Swiss Stephane Bohli in straight sets to clinch one of the more coveted and unusual Challenger titles.

The lack of live scoring over the years for these mystifying Championships is perhaps not surprising considering its somewhat remote and remarkable location. Thankfully however, thanks to internet communications, we have access to the players who are turning up this year, and the match-ups that they have been placed in, so let’s take a look at the key fixtures of the first round that start on a fairly modest Monday’s play:

Gilles Muller (3) v Danai Udomchoke

 

The big serving lefty who hails from Luxembourg will face off against Danai Udomchoke, one of few notable tennis professionals originating from the nation of Thailand. Muller can be proud of what he has achieved for his country’s sporting reputation; he is by far the most successful male tennis player that is affiliated with Luxembourgish origin. He turned Pro exactly 10 years ago and once upon a time, he was ranked 59 but is now outside the top 100 and sits 134 in the ATP World rankings. In 2008 Gilles enjoyed a spectacular run in the US Open where he advanced to the Quarter Finals, which was a big shock at the time. His serve being his obvious main weapon, he can be a real handful for any player on his day; he is also one of a diminishing number of players that possesses a fancy two-handed backhand.

His opponent Udomchoke will turn 30 in August of this year. He was once ranked at no. 77 in the World and his best performance at a Slam was the 3^rd round of the Aussie Open back in 2007. The Thai’s most recent Title was in Busan, South Korea, where he defeated up-and-coming Slovenian Blaz Kavcic in straight sets 6-2, 6-2 just a couple years ago.

Danai endured a rather miserable 2010 and is now ranked in the 400’s so he is sure to be itching to get back on the tennis circuit for 2011 and climb back up the rankings, where no doubt he feels his ability warrants. He did appear in the Bangkok ATP event in his home country, of course, but his Wildcard only took him as far as the first round where he lost to the ever impressive Finn Jarkko Nieminen in straight sets.

It would be foolish to expect too much from Muller’s opponent today on the back of a very disappointing 2010 season. Although Muller remains outside the top 100, he had a relatively successful season last year and he continues to hold his own against some top players; he took big John Isner, the American, to 3 very tight sets before succumbing to a harsh defeat. Muller went 40-23 (W-L) over the past 12 months, a highly respectable record indeed.

The Luxembourger should take this in straight sets barring any surprises. Both men possess plenty of experience but Muller should be able to find his groove early on, and if he brings the confidence from 2010 it should be a relatively straight forward task for the 27-year-old. For Danai Udomchoke, I expect it will be a case of hard work, determination and practise to get his career right back on track.