I do still strongly think that Billy will be needing more, and at least he's got a very good MD R1 draw. Mark my words, 580 points won't hold as a top 100 counter on Monday week.

Quite apart from his other Miami rivals, 5 challenger players could overtake him from 4 different challenger events. 1 needs to reach the SF, 2 need to reach finals and 2 need to take titles. But all 5 are top 3 seeds in their events. So, while top seeds routinely fall early in challengers, each of these 5 is a very realistic danger.

And as said, there is another week after this one with more challengers.

For now I would love to see Billy win a MD round or two just for the wins in themselves and future rankings. If he does win a couple to take him to 620 points it will maybe look interesting re top 100 though even that might not be enough.

Yeh, all good points from Indy, TSymonds ( I want to call you Tim - no idea if that is right!) and Madadman...I guess my main point was that, for this week at least, it felt like the competition around Billy wasnt as tough in terms of points challengers as I thought - but I hadnt studied there respective draws in CHallengers, and Indy makes a good point re them all being top seeded level players.

Let's see. Billy isnt anywhere next week if he loses during this week in Miami, but then goes onto Menorca w.c. 31st March and maybe that will end up being more realistic for him? He is due to be top seed there but there are a number of strong and experienced challengers also playing - Coric, Ofner, Cilic, Ramos-Vinolas. Their rankings may have slipped but there is a lot of experience in those few players

1 Billy Harris 107 107
2 Borna Coric 112 120
3 Sebastian Ofner 131 127
4 Marin Cilic 143 142
5 Carlos Taberner 170 174
6 Jan Choinski 178 184
7 Vilius Gaubas 194 185
8 Edas Butvilas 201 234
Benjamin Hassan 207 204
Henri Squire 208 173
Lukas Neumayer 209 208
Ignacio Buse 216 227
Albert Ramos-Vinolas 225 224
Daniel Rincon 228 230
Adrian Andreev 231 235
Andrea Vavassori 238 232
Javier Barranco Cosano 243 248
Nick Hardt 247 229
Arthur Gea 305 10 (NG)
Justin Engel 353 16 (NG)

Yeah. I was referring to the likely challenger events that some of those who are out of Miami may play in. I wonder how much the players care about live rankings, though I've anecdotally noticed it seems to get noticed more in commentary now than before.

Wonder if the challengers calm down a bit as I think the next big event is Monte Carlo and a lot of players seem to give themselves a little rest between these big 1000 events.

Bencic eventually won, Billy is *3-4 on serve

Stircrazy wrote:

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Blue_Belle wrote:

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Bencic eventually won, Billy is *3-4 on serve

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First set down the pan by 6-7(2).   

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 But is *5-1 up in the second.

Now *5-3...

-- Edited by Blue_Belle on Thursday 20th of March 2025 02:16:50 AM

L96:  (WC) Eliot Spizzirri (USA) WR 134 (= CH) beat (Q) Billy Harris WR 107 by 7-6(2) 3-6 6-2

Jake vs Benjamin Bonzi has just started.