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AlwaysHawks15

Premiership Player
Nov 12, 2014
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Kyrgios won his first round easily 6-4, 6-2 in Marseilie. Played well to win the title last year so hopefully the form is there.
The right time to get back into things, 2 weeks since the davis cup and 2 weeks since the aus open. Should be ready to go and hopefully mentally he is where he needs to be.
 

FFC4ME

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Dec 21, 2008
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I have no stats to back this up but my observation is our guys struggle post the Australian summer and pick up again after the French.

This isn't always the case - last year for example, Millman had a fantastic February where he followed up R3 at the AO with his first ATP quarter final in Montpellier and round wins at Memphis, Indian Wells and Miami.

This year, Jordan Thompson had the breakout Aussie summer - but I think the Davis Cup got in the way of a smooth transition to international play for him. He has a intriguing match against Taylor Fritz to try and qualify for the 500 tournament in Acapulco, and will feature in IW and Miami for the first time as a direct acceptance. He'll be OK I think, but does need to keep dropping down to Challengers to pick up points all year too.

Where the problems lie is in the fact that Duckworth, Millman and Kokkinakis are all on lengthy injury breaks at the moment. That means that the gap below Thommo seems more massive than it really should be, especially given that it appears Barton and De Minaur have joined them in a more short term sense.

I would say Matthew Ebden has had a very successful comeback via his protected ranking, and Alex Bolt has been in good form given that his ranking was basically gone by the time he returned.

But Groth's singles form remains scratchy (which is still an improvement on last year's godawful!); Whittington has his moments but is really struggling to adapt to being a Challenger regular, even when seeded; Polmans had a very strong finish to 2016 but has been pretty poor this year to be honest; O'Connell is still adapting to Challengerdom as well (but probably better than Whittington); and Matosevic, Saville and Smith just can't seem to get any consistency.

On a brighter note, Barty has just qualified for WTA Kuala Lumpur and Destanee Aiava has won an ITF $25k here in Perth. Combined with decent form by Arina Rodionova and Olivia Rogowska, and Lizette Cabrera having enough ranking breathing space to try and jump up some levels on tour (though she's finding it tough right now), the womens side is looking much brighter than it has for a while.
 

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Thompson lost that final round qualy match in 3 sets, a tad disappointing but got a lucky loser spot and will play Lopez tomorrow
 
Watched the match, it's becoming clear he's very good at a scrapper (might getting up there as far as speed around the court goes) but has no big groundies to kill an opponent. As soon as Jordy turned this into a grindfest he did very well. I think his results are going to depend on how well his opponents are playing, if they are a little bit off he can take that opportunity.
 

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Sep 27, 2012
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Shocking start to the year for Bernie. Something NQR, well something more than usual, as he hasn't even had issues off court - that have been reported anyway. Whether it is injury or a big push back against coaching techniques.

Yeah, sounds like there may be more to it that just Bernie being Bernie. Re the actual temperature, if it was humid 28 C can feel like 35. Nonetheless, you have to get yourself fit enough to play in those types of conditions. Maybe he didn't want to play Nick in the second round :p
 
Bernie doesn't care, why should I?

I'm wondering how Nick loses a set to Sela, doesn't matter because he got the win but his serve just shouldn't be broken.
 

vaughany

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Mar 23, 2002
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Strange.

"Heat related" or just avoiding publicity of second round clash with Kyrgios?


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