October 29, 2024

Open Court

MORE TENNIS THAN YOU'LL EVER NEED

Today’s Daily Drill features worrying times for Sir Andy Murray, who is undergoing a back procedure today to give himself a shot at playing Wimbledon and the Olympics.

There’s more Olympic news and debatable nominations.

There are shenanigans with Wimbledon wild cards and disparate WTA tourneys.

And there’s … DELPO NEWS!

(Unfortunately not the kind you were hoping for).

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Murray to have back “procedure” today

The British media are reporting that Andy Murray will have a “procedure” on his back today, after he was forced to retire in evident pain during his match against Jordan Thompson at Queen’s Club.

Murray has often said that he’s dealt with back issues throughout his career. After the US Open in 2013, and then Davis Cup, he had non-invasive “minor surgery” for a long-standing problem that had flared up during the Rome tournament, where he was forced to retire.

Murray still won the Queen’s-Wimbledon double that year. But he missed the rest of the season after the surgery and, indeed, has had to give the back special attention every year after the clay-court season.

His management team promised updates after it’s done today. Certainly these final moments of his career – notably with Wimbledon looming, and then the Olympics – seem at risk.

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Similar but unequal: Bad Homburg vs Eastbourne

Eastbourne and Bad Homburg are similar, competing tournaments. But they were not created equal.

Both the Bad Homburg and Eastbourne WTA events are 500-level tournaments this week (for Eastbourne, sadly, it’s the last time as it gets downgraded to a 250 next year, bumped down by the new WTA event at Queen’s Club).

But in the qualifying, they are anything but equal.

The Eastbourne qualifying is a 24-player draw with 12 seeds, and two victories are needed to make the main draw.

In Bad Homburg, it’s only a eight-player draw with four seeds. And those players only have to win ONE match to make the main draw of a WTA 500.

Bad Homburg

The two 500s look to have a similar same prize-money structure, with €8,825 going to a main-draw, first-round loser. But there’s less allocated to the qualifying.

In Bad Homburg, just being in the qualifying draw earns you €4,345. One win gets you that first-round prize money.

In Eastbourne, where the top four seeds are a little more highly ranked than in Bad Homburg, being in the draw earns you about €3,600. If you win a round, that gets bumped to a little over €7,000.

It’s a pretty significant gap between tournaments that are supposed to be about the same. You hope the players were aware of all this when they decided which one to play.

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Ilkley wild card switcheroo

The All-England Club never specifically confirms that they hold a Wimbledon main-draw wild card for the winner of this week’s Ilkley Challenger.

Players at the Ilkley Challenger likely thought they had a shot at a Wimbledon wild card if they won it. But late in the week … that was no longer the case.

But the pattern is clear:

All of the below champions received a Wimbledon wild card – with the exception of Kubler, who was already in the draw by ranking. Rather, Sebastian Ofner – whom Kubler beat in that 2023 final – received the free pass.

That appeared to be the case this year, with the wild cards announced and one still to be determined.

Until Friday, when that final wild card was given to Brit Charles Broom, who lost in the second round at Ilkley.

Broom, 26, was ranked No. 283 until he went on a run at a similar Challenger in Surbiton two weeks ago, beating Lloyd Harris, Dan Evans and Wimbledon wild card Billy Harris before losing to No. 525 Jacob Fearnley in the final. That moved him up 100 spots to a career high.

Which makes you wonder why they didn’t just offer him the spot in the first place.

Broom has had qualifying wild cards in the last two editions, and lost in the first round in 2022 and in the second round last year.

Of course, the AELTC can give their wild cards to whomever they choose (notably, they did not choose former finalist Milos Raonic this year).

Still, players might have made different choices had that wild card not been presumed to be on the table for that tournament. And at least theoretically pulling it at this late stage sort of feels like they’ve pulled the rug right under the semifinalists.

Those include the finalists – veteran David Goffin (way down the alternates list but in the Ilkley final) and Harold Mayot and losing semifinalists Zachary Svajda and Benjamin Bonzi.

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Big Olympic squad for the home team

French No. 2 Adrian Mannarino – notoriously allergic to red clay – took himself out of the running for an Olympic nomination early on.

So other than Mannarino, the French federation went with the four men’s singles players whose ranking makes them eligible for their “home” Olympics at Roland Garros.

Gaël Monfils, who appeared a serious longshot a year ago when he was barely inside the top 400 in the rankings, is ranked No. 38 at age 37 and has made the team along with Ugo Humbert, Arthur Fils and another longshot, Corentin Moutet.

On the women’s side, Caroline Garcia, Diane Parry, Clara Burel and new Frenchwoman Varvara Gracheva get the nods in singles.

There is only one nomination in women’s doubles: Garcia and Parry (ranked No. 134, fifth among Frenchwomen). The two have never, ever played together.

Garcia and Mladenovic in Rio in 2016. It was fun times as Garcia (then sponsored by Nike) had to turn a Mladenovic adidas dress inside-out to meet the matchy-matchy rules. OF COURSE, they blamed the FFT minions for it.

Left off is veteran and former top-10 singles player Kristina Mladenovic, who is ranked No. 55 in doubles and who has teamed up often with Garcia; they even won Roland Garros together just two years ago.

On the men’s doubles side, friends Edouard Roger-Vasselin and Nicolas Mahut did what they could, teaming together and with others to find a way to go to the Games together.

But as Roger-Vasselin fell just short of being in the top 10, which would have given him more leeway, he ends up getting selected along with 28-year-old Fabien Reboul. At 40, it’s his first Olympics.

Those two also have … never played together.

Meanwhile, Reboul and regular partier Sadio Doumbia, also a Frenchman, are ranked No. 33 and No. 34 in the current doubles rankings with Reboul taking the higher spot on the basis of having played two fewer tournaments over the last 52 weeks.

Doumbia and Reboul at Roland Garros in 2022. Despite their success as a team this year, only one of them got the Olympic nod.

The pair, who have been a team for years and have won two ATP Tour titles this year, are just outside the top eight in the race to the ATP Tour Finals.

While we appreciate the fact that France can only nominate six men in all, and they already have four singles players and so only have room for two doubles players, it feels as though they didn’t make a decision at all.

(That wouldn’t have been an issue with the women, because Garcia was already among the four singles nominees. They just decided not to nominate Mladenovic).

While it’s hard to know if Roger-Vasselin/Mahut or Doumbia/Reboul had realistic medal hopes, you’d think that a random pickup team would have even less of a shot.

These selections are … SO fraught with so many side issues. Then again, this is the Olympics.

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DelPo to open Florida academy

Del Potro practicing for Wimbledon in 2016.

Low-profile since his (probable but not official) retirement, Juan Martin del Potro may be spending more time in south Florida going forward.

According to the Palm Beach Post, the former Grand Slam champion, still only 35, is opening an eponymous tennis academy in Boynton Beach, Fla. in September.

“He’s ready now to be fully involved in the tennis world. Being close to tennis activities had been hard for him because of his injuries. He wants to do it by giving back. He has a wealth of experience not only in the court but outside the court that he feels this urge to share it. He wants to give to the sport by helping generate the new generation of tennis players, particularly in the Americas,’’ said academy spokesperson Alicia Civita.

Indian Springs Country Club courts (Google Maps)

There are 26 courts at the Indian Springs Country Club that Civita said weren’t being used to their full potential.

The complex appears to currently be the home of a tennis academy run by Peruvian coach Jose Tenorio and the Ronan Tennis Academy, owned and operated by Irish coach Ronan McKeever. You’d expect that all has to be worked out.

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For previous editions of the Daily Drill, click here.

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