This week, random scoops and more

Nice comments! When I hear it I will fly over there as soon as possible. Want a house there, too!

But how on earth can Savolt and Alonso buy a house at Florida?? They never earnd that much money. Must have rich parents as lot of tennis players have. (tbh without parents it is mostly impossible to become a pro).

Who is in the pic? Is that a foot fault! Agree with scoop on Everett, my kids went there for a week and while they said it was good, they really pay attention to the boarders ( the full timers). You get much better deals at those places (like saddlebrook) off season. Dan, if that guy dom charged $2 per hour, that was way too much.

Was just watching the Dallas challenger, Mark Knowles is playing doubles with Harry, and they won the first set, how old is Knowles?

Why Klahn’s a genius: he avoided this crazy Dallas draw. Amazingly many players close to qualifying for the AO were beat soundly in the Dallas draw.

Harrison could do worse than work on the things pointed out on the blog and practice them. Seriously I believe there are people in his ear saying “just play your game just play your game and be confident and you can get back to the top 50”.

Yes, Kerr is the guy I interviewed and did an article on in Newport. I’m always stunned by these doubles guys like Kerr and Nicolas Monroe who don’t have great results, but somehow make a living and travel the world.

Gotta love Estrella, small guy with I believe a one-hander. But do you really think this Dallas draw is so tough? Who’s in it that’s any good besides maybe SteveJo?

Might be a tough business, but this isn’t a stellar challenger. When Mike Russell’s the No. 1 seed and there isn’t a player in the top-95. Look, for a long while, the American challengers had players like Goldstein, Kendrick and even Tursunov, those were a lot stronger than this draw.

3 players I like are in the challenger finals this week — Steve Johnson in Dallas F, Klahn in West Lakes F, and Yuki Bhambri in Chennai F. I would guess 2 of these 3 should win, and I would not be surprised if all 3 win their finals.

Klahn is now #73 in the live tennis rankings, and if he wins he would jump #66 — coming dangerously close to Querrey who’s at #56. It looks like Klahn would make a trip to top 50 this year. Lets see!

Johnson has jumped 14 spots, and if he wins, he would jump a total of 25 spots to reach #129. Looks like he is getting into form.

If Bhambri wins, he would reach #146, a jump of 27 spots. Bhambri would be within top 100 within 6 months is my bet.

Semi interesting article in Grantland “the futures is bleak”, about the futures tour, and focusing on Evan King. The author, Paul Wachter, played a baseline game and tie break against king and had some interesting observations, namely the difference in levels (college, futures, challengers, ATP) is not the pace, but how long a player can sustain a point without their strokes breaking down.

All 3 won their Challenger finals (Johnson, Klahn and Bhambri), as I suspected. Nice! 🙂

Dan, I agree with your comment on Klahn. He is a good player but he has won most of his points to get to around #66 in rankings in the challengers. He could win a few more challengers and get in the top 50! But he has yet to prove himself on the ATP main tour.. He cannot escape it now anymore, obviously. To go ahead further he will have to compete against the best. That’s where we will see how much depth and strength his game has. I think he might struggle a bit. But hopefully he can give a good fight. I think he will have to improve from his current game.

Scoop, even in challengers, in the last few months, Klahn has been traveling and playing in challengers where there are only a few good players. For example in West Lakes, the only players he had to beat were 200+ in his half and then a 166 ranker in the finals. He deliberately picked challengers where he will have less competition and can pick up the points. He can only hide for so long.

He did win the Maui challenger and the Santa Cruz challenger where there were better players but the others were in Aus or Asia where he had weaker competition.

I am not saying he is not good, but he has to prove himself against the better players. Against top 100 players.

The whole tennis world know that the easiest way to gain points are the Asian and Australian and African challengers/futures but still only a few make the trip.

Guys just have to make their way into Top100 – no matter how. It is their chance to compete on the big ones.

Huge talents make it faster, other try it for one decade.

Nadal f.e. just played 14 challengers his whole life!

Btw: Thiem tries the hard way atm with playing big ATP events (Rotterdam 500, Acapulco 500, IndianWells 1000, Miami 1000 – all qualis).

Klahn is smarter, Thiem believes he can make it this way.

Klahn’s wildcard unlike most “was earned” – he won the most points of any U.S. player on the USTA summer circuit (much like Alex Kuznetsov’s entry into the French open by doing the same prior to the French). This wasn’t a “we like you so you get a wildcard, here, go out and lose a first round match”. As much as the USTA can be criticized it did something right with it’s new method for allocating its wildcards. Under the old system it was “how much do we like you?” The new system is merit-based for the most part. Look at Australia – they didn’t let Kudla in because Steve Johnson “won” the tournament that allocated one of the U.S. wildcards, so he had to play the qualies (and qualified on the back of three solid wins).

Sure it’s still a wildcard – but if you win your wildcard it shows a lot more than a judgment call on the part of someone else evaluating your game. In 2012 he was wild-carded into the “qualifying” draw of the U.S. Open, won his three matches then upset Melzer.

Again maybe this is all fluff. But I don’t see many beyond tennis-prose who even knows who Klahn is (some people at menstennisforum are calling him a “vulture” who’s chery-picking at lesser events). But look at it this way: Klahn’s from California, and for him traveling further west (or to the far east) is a lot easier than if he were a Florida player. So if it’s easier and he’s racking up the points while other players are suffering at the racquets of their peers for lunch money and first round challenger losses, maybe we ought to say:

“Well done Klahn and good luck man.”

Yeah I was impressed with Borna Coric at Zagreb. Occasionally you see something in a player even when they lose. The kid’s just 17, was the No 1 ranked junior last year, and has a good varied game already. His problem was gassing out in the third, he looked ready to keel over by the end. Coric is a name I’ll remember down the road.