May 20
So the draw is out for French Open qualifying, and the 128 are busy preparing to be shredded down into 16 players who will make the main draw and guarantee a career enhancing cheque for €21,000. There are some obvious talents to focus on, who have shown well on the main tour or the Challenger …
May 20
It was the week that the French Open announced its wild card picks and no-one paid much attention. Six French players plus the nominees from the US & Australian federations thanks to their reciprocal arrangement, were given main draw places. John Millman got a deserving helping hand from down under, and Alex Kuznetsov was known …
May 16
You might have wondered why Brazil’s Fernando Romboli has been missing from the Challenger circuit. You probably haven’t, but the truth has been revealed by the International Tennis Federation, that he failed a drugs test. The whole process seems to have been laborious. Romboli’s positive test happened last July, at the Bogota Challenger and the …
May 14
Apologies for the increasingly slack updates, and a warning in advance this update might feel somewhat British in nature. If you thought Kazakhstan had a fairly boisterous player recruitment programme, it seems Britain has also learned the skill of acquiring talent, albeit with more apparent home town connections. Brydan Klein, brought up in Australia but …
May 06
It was a week where youth and drugs both had their way but not, unusually, together after some rock concert. Firstly, the conclusion of the trial of Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes caused much disquiet. The man who helped dope a number of cyclists got a one-year suspended prison sentence. But having teased people like a …
Apr 30
Our interviews at the AEGON Bournemouth Futures were both with players ranked in the 700′s – although it didn’t make the cut in the final copy, the ambition of both players was at least to make the top 500 by the end of the year. They know they can’t hang around forever at the Futures …
Apr 25
Britain’s Ashley Hewitt is coming to that difficult point in his tennis career – and he sort of knows it. He’s 21, and ranked 717 in the world, as he makes the transition from the junior to senior levels, and is now facing the challenge of making it pay on his own without guaranteed cash …
Apr 25
In the days of the cold war, political commentators or “insiders” would sometimes attempt to explain the mysteries of Eastern European culture through use of the joke. These jokes struggled to translate, and would rarely get laughs, but I think Dominik Schulz (Age: 21, Ranking: 746) might be amused. He’s good like that. So this …
Apr 22
It’s the column that refuses to die, just, but it would seem just too much of a crying shame to leave Jarkko Nieminen‘s claim he felt like a “rock star” thanks to the crowd’s support at the Monte Carlo Masters go unrecorded for future generations. He got paid like one too, picking up a very …
Apr 08
An exciting weekend of success for Davis Cup journeymen everywhere. In the World Group, Carlos Berlocq, Lukas Rosol, Vasek Pospisil and Ilija Bozoljac all played significant parts in helping their respective nations of Argentina, the Czech Republic, Canada and Serbia into the last four of the World Group, with Rosol taking both singles points in …
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