Luke lost 4 and 6, not a bad result.

3rd seeded in doubles with Dom, play Millman and Hanfmann.

No Brits in main draw singles

Luke had a very promising Futures debut beating the second seed and getting to the semis and later on lost to Oli Golding in a Futures final but just never really kicked on.

indiana wrote:

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paulisi wrote:

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Luke was a decent singles player, but got into that position where his doubles ranking was so superior to his singles that he became a doubles specialist - lots of Brits have gone sown this route

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 Although a very good junior (JCH 22) Luke's singles really wasn't progessing as a senior with his singles CH being 481 in 2016 as a 21 yo. At that tine he was outside the top 300 in doubkes.

But as his singles at best plateaued he has said he no longer  enjoyed playing singles, and with his doubles yes becoming relatively much more successful he made the full time switch to doubles.  Probably in some ways a very hard but in other ways an easy decision. 

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Luke's singles career seems to have taken a fatal blow at 19 when the LTA appointed Michael Downey & Bob Brett. Change of regime that affected others as well. Luke was on course within a 5 year 18 - 23 development plan when the pair suddenly terminated his support. It would appear that it was not the financial impact, but the lack of emotional support from the LTA during this transition. I watched his performance this morning & for a vast majority of the time he was the better player. What might have been! Testament to him for moving on in his doubles career.  

Well, Jonny Marray got dumped by Freddie, didn't he, coz Freddie wanted to concentrate on singles. And that was reasonably successful - he didn't win a Grand Slam in singles though ! :)

Pierre-H Herbert is another player who concentrated very much on doubles in the mid 2010s - he was top ten in doubles in 2015 while still outside of the singles top 100.

And then declared he was going to concentrate more on singles.

(Of course, he didn't drop his doubles, but his singles results picked up markedly).

Like Bambo, his decision was largely financial too - he basically had run out of FFT support and had to earn money - so focused on dubs and then earned enough money in doubles (and some in singles) to give singles a proper go.

Shhh wrote:

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I think that was the way I was thinking of it Coup.

If a player begins to think he may not make it in singles, he swaps to doubles. we know numerous examples. Or an older player that cannot maintain the standard for high level singles but feels he can still play the main tour as a doubles player.

What about a player like Luke, who maybe could not keep going as a singles player, swapped to doubles, did well for himself and reached a point where they felt they could return to singles and push on further than they did first time?

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 But  - am I missing something?  - isn't that exactly what P-H H did? As above. He couldn't really make top 100 as a singles player. So swapped to doubles. Did well. Felt he could then return to singles and did better than he had first time round. 

Luke was for too young to ditch his singles or tennis career if you like. Karatsev is a perfect example of that from nowhere. I wonder if he regrets it now given hes not really doing much at doubles. Its still not too late.

L16:  (3) Luke Bambridge & Dominic Inglot CR 124 (64+60) defeated Yannick Hanfmann & John Millman (GER/AUS) CR 1681 (895+786) by 3 & 3

*****

QF:  (3) Luke Bambridge & Dominic Inglot CR 124 (64+60) vs (WC) Jamie Cerretani & Adil Shamasdin (USA/CAN) CR 351 (158+193)