Yes, the crazy event of Bucharest where seeded players never win or haven't won the event since the Muster days. There have been some great winners of this event aka Franco Davin, Richard Fromberg, David "Pics" Ferrer and Jose Acasuso spring to mind and they weren't seeded at all.
Monfils asked for a WC, but that was reserved for local heroes Pavel, Lurch Hanescu and Santoro, this was a good choice and also Monfils needed the match practice and he got that and made the main draw and should cause some problems to any of the players he faces.
Fat Albert Montañes and Che Vassallo Arguello have already made the second round with wins over Devilder who struggles to win at main tour level and Eschauer respectively and this is the big career year for Werner, but in all likelihood, there will be a huge fall in the ranking.
Last clay event of the year sadly and there will be many players who need to do well here before they move onto their weaker surfaces like Starace, Roitman and the King who has a tough match against local Pavel and will be on centre court for sure.
Bad day for the Aussies and the battle between Luczak and "Ronald McDonald" Guccione for the last Davis Cup spot, well isn't clearer now as both of them lost today to Andreev and Navarro Pastor respectively. Luczak lost to one of the best players in this event in a tight 3 setter, but he needed to play a bit above himself to take out Andreev and losing 6-4 in the 3rd is respectable, though having a 30-0 lead in the 10th game on serve has to hurt a bit. As for the Gooch, he isn't in great form at the moment, but I think he will get the nod, more in the DC preview next week.
Blogger favourite Seppi won a wonderfully entertaining match which you wouldn't say was serve dominated 4-6 7-5 6-4. The first set there were around 6 consecutive breaks of serve, uintil Melzer decided to hold in the 10th game.
The second set, something happened and they held serve all the way to the last game and then Seppi broke to love.
Seppi gets the break then at 4-2, Melzer restarts the breakathon and it continued all the way through to the end, where Seppi breaks serve for the match after failing to serve it out to 6-4
4 comments:
The Bucharest tradition continues in that the seeds are falling everywhere, though Volandri losing to Monfils is not a surprise at all.
Roitman losing 0 and 1 to Armando is just so funny that words can't describe it.
Seppi losing 3 games to Armando, there had to be something going on that doesn't add up.
Starace as usual doing well in a small event and he has to milk it before the clay season ends.
Andreev losing to Gicquel, this isn't a great thing, and he can get some preparation for Davis Cup now.
Great stuff with the blog and this was a very enjoyable read once again. Bizarre Bucharest is a tennis institution, and the tournament has once again lived up to its billing this week.
I can't help but feel Andreev wasted a good opportunity this week, and Escopeta and Seppi's efforts against Armando were so bad they were comical.
Nothing beats international series claycourt events.
Heading into the weekend, the Gael-force is surely the favourite to win his 2nd ATP title, but hopefully The Lurch can spring a surprise.
wow I haven't visited the blog for a while.
Any idea why Mucho retired, GWH?
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