Week 6 - Futures F5 ($10K) - Cartagena, Spain

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

RE: Week 6 - Futures F5 ($10K) - Cartagena, Spain

freerider · Futures level

more importantly our dream team got a game - dee and goode losing 1 and bagel

steven · Tennis legend

Yes, I haven't given up on one day being able to stop caling Charlie "notso" and start calling him "pretty" instead ...

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

Stircrazy wrote:

[Alex Ward] takes on the Spanish qualifier, Steven Diez, who needed three sets to overcome a slightly more lowly ranked fellow qualifier today, in Round 2. Señor "Ten" [...]

Just been checking the TeniSpain.com site in the hope of finding advance news of today's results: no such bloody luck! hmm

What I did notice, however, was evidence that both the ATP & the ITF have got it well & truly wrong, somewhat to my dismay, since I rather enjoyed the play on words... The player's surname is DiAz (a very common Spanish surname), not DiEz, which really is the Spanish word for the number 10...! disbelief

steven · Tennis legend

I agree that Diaz is by far the more common of the two, I've never seen his name shown as Diaz before, so maybe the person who wrote his name on the 'resultados' section of tenispain's home page for Cartagena just assumed it must be Diaz and got it wrong (?)

Also his academy calls him Díez. http://centreinternacional.fctennis.org/eng/not.php?id=1&idn=14

-- Edited by steven at 21:27, 2009-02-10

steven · Tennis legend

Today's result was well worth waiting for! biggrin

L32 Q3: (PR) Morgan Phillips WR 1496 beat (3) Pablo Martin-Adalia WR 502 by 3-6 7-5 6-1 biggrin

This result is further evidence that Morgan is playing near the level he was at before his freak injury and from his results in his last three tournaments, he seems to be far more ready for this second attempt at a comeback than he was for the first one, when he only won one main draw match in nearly four months.

L16: Alex Ward WR 973 v Steven Diez (ESP) WR 1140
L16: (PR) Morgan Phillips WR 1496 v (WC) Angel Alonso-Campos (ESP) WR 1565

Diez has never been in the top 1000, but managed to beat Cox and Milton a year or so ago.

Alonso-Campos won a WC v unranked WC match in R1, only his 2nd win in his last 14 matches.

The winners of the two L16 matches above will play each other in the QFs. Could they? ... wink

-- Edited by steven at 21:46, 2009-02-10

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

steven wrote:

Today's result was worth waiting for!

The doubles wasn't: Alex & Xavier Morera Balcells lost 1 & 1 to the top seeds! cry

freerider · Futures level

bhrilliant result - i think its worth mentioning the player morgan beat was last weeks losing finalists so was in good early season form - the evidence piles up

Portsey · Intermediate Club Player

Well done to both of them! Big chance of a semi-finalist (fingers crossed).....

Here's also hoping that Alex and Morgan can push up into the clump of players with 500-700 rankings, it would be nice to see a similar thing happen with the men as it has with the women - a lot of in-fighting for GB Nos 5-10!

steven · Tennis legend

freerider wrote:
brilliant result - i think its worth mentioning the player morgan beat was last weeks losing finalists so was in good early season form - the evidence piles up

... and funnily enough, he beat Stebe 4 & 1 last week after the German had just beaten Morgan! He's also the player whom Wardy beat in two tiebreaks in the Denia Future Final back in July.

-- Edited by steven at 22:25, 2009-02-10

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

steven wrote:

I agree that Diaz is by far the more common of the two, I've never seen his name shown as Diaz before, so maybe the person who wrote his name on the 'resultados' section of tenispain's home page for Cartagena just assumed it must be Diaz and got it wrong (?)

Also his academy calls him Díez. http://centreinternacional.fctennis.org/eng/not.php?id=1&idn=14

-- Edited by steven at 21:27, 2009-02-10

Ah, that explains more or less everything: he's a Catalan! I checked the Spanish Tennis Federation site, which is currently experiencing technical problems while the site is being updated & doesn't even have him listed in the national rankings. "Steven" is not a kosher Spanish (i.e. Castilian) Christian name (the standard Spanish equivalent of "Stephen"/"Steven" is "Esteban", with the stress on the second "e") & the accent on the "i" in the surname means that I still don't get to use my play on words, as it shifts the stress to the first syllable: thus "Díez" does not mean "ten" ("diez" does, but the stress is on the second syllable, which doesn't need to be shown because it follows the normal rules...!). No doubt that's all as clear as mud! wink

ForeverDelayed · Grand Slam Champion

Great win for Morgan, and he really does look to be back to his best at the moment and hopefully he can keep this form up for a while and get back to where he was before the injury happened as soon as possible.

Looking at the draw he's got, you'd be disappointed if he didn't make the semi finals here really, as the WC doesn't look that special, while Diez or the Wardinator probably aren't better players than him, so this could the tournament where he starts to pick up the big points again.

imoen · Admin: Moderator+Tennis Legend

Can't say I'm a spanish speaker (I can read it enough to get tennis/formula1 results off cefax, thank you GCSE Latin) but I find all that stuff fascinating, thanks Steven and Stircrazy, please continue to bore the rest of the forum to tears, I'm throughly interested!

steven · Tennis legend

Stircrazy wrote:
Ah, that explains more or less everything: he's a Catalan!

"Steven" is not a kosher Spanish (i.e. Castilian) Christian name

Yes, Catalan, Basque or from the Balearics is usually the explanation for these oddities.

I'm pretty sure Steven isn't a Catalan name though - I'd guess he has a British or American mother.

Stircrazy · Tennis legend

steven wrote:

Stircrazy wrote:
Ah, that explains more or less everything: he's a Catalan!

"Steven" is not a kosher Spanish (i.e. Castilian) Christian name
Yes, Catalan, Basque or from the Balearics is usually the explanation for these oddities.

I'm pretty sure Steven isn't a Catalan name though - I'd guess he has a British or American mother.

Don't forget "gallego" (Galician), but given the Basque predilection for non-Castilian consonants, I'd almost be prepared to put my money on that - if I were a betting woman (Google singularly unhelpful...! hmm

)!