mixed news from the doubles. Auckland/Bloomfield lost their first round match something like 62 63. Probably a combination of the fact they were playing one match after Bloomfield's singles loss and they are a brand new partnership and they were playing a local pairing of Faurel and Chardy.
Better news from the second seeds, Marry/Lee though. They won their quarter-final by walkover so will have ample energy left for their semi and Marry for his singles qf. They will play the winner of Norman/Carraz v Gulbis/Zverev.
__________________
To look at a thing is quite different from seeing a thing and one does not see anything until one sees its beauty
Oh and 3 and a half days into this tournament the live-score finally works!!
What's more annoying was that it started to work, JUST after Mackin's win
Still, at least we'll be able to follow Mackin and Marray in the quarters ! 2/4 Brits through is pretty cool. I believe that you might have to go all the way back to Belgrade 2005 [Parmar and Boggo] to find the last time we had two Brits in the quarters of an overseas challenger.
Fantastic results from Mackin and Marray over in-form opponents ranked about 300 places higher in Jonny's case and about 150 places higher in Mackin's case. Jonny's game seems to work particularly well against Ascione, the Frenchman has really struggled both times they've played with Marray's constant chip-charging. I was a little worried about Mackin given that he was totally outhit this time last year by Zverev, indoors. However, after a tight 1st set it appears that Paisley's finest gave the German a good smackin'.
Richard and Boggo's results were disappointing, I thought that Richard's game would have been effective against Meffert's style of play but maybe Richard just had an off-day. Stoppini's ranking doesn't really reflect some of the wins he's had this year: Goldstein, Agassi, Martin Lee, Jamie Baker, I read somewhere that alex's groin injury was still pretty sore last week so maybe that affected his movement and the stoppini match would have been more baseline orientated than the Wessels match.
Incidentally Ernest Gulbis took a set off Olivier Rochus in rd2, so no shame in Martin losing to him - Gulbis most definately looks like a top 100 player of the near future.
I've also received a report on the Bloomfield-Arazi rd1 match, it's a little late for posting this but m-j-d in particular might be interested in reading it: "Richard Bloomfield played a very consistent match, forcing Arazi to make mistakes. Arazi recovered from deficits twice in the match, firstly to level things at 1 set all and then from 3-0 down back to 3-3 in the final set. However, Richard was able to hold his nerve and strike again. Richard had a very high percentage of 1st serves in and he serve-volleyed throughout the match. Richard believes that the indoor greenset courts smell like grass !!!!"