Year 369 recap:
The first Grand Slam of the year was won by world #2
Vincent Caladrini, a routine straight-set win over #6
Matt Flashman.
The Indian Wells Masters was won by homecrowd favourite #2
Nigel Vavasour, who beat Sweden's
Franz Palmquist 5/7, 6/4, 6/1.
In Miami,
Vavasour won again, this time beating
Caladrini 0/6, 6/4, 6/2, a really nice recovery from a piss-poor first set.
In Monte Carlo, #3
Zhai Zhao-ji from Singapore beat #1
Caladrini 7/6(4), 4/6, 6/4.
In Madrid, #7
Zhai Xiao-xuan from Singapore (I assume supposed to be Zhao-ji's brother?) won the title, beating #5
Harald Helm from Germany, 6/3, 3/6, 7/5.
Rome saw
Zhao-ji beat
Caladrini in another Masters finals, this time 6/3, 6/4.
In the French Open,
Xiao-xuan reached the finals as the #7 seed but lost to #12
Dimas Riveria from Argentina in a close finals, 6/1, 6/4, 3/6, 6/7(5), 6/2.
Wimbledon saw the world's top 2 players in the finals and #1
Caladrini beat #2
Vavasour routinely, 6/4, 7/6(3), 7/5. Caladrini's 2nd Grand Slam for the year.
The Canada Masters saw a re-match of the Wimbledon finals and another relatively easy win for
Caladrini over
Vavasour, 6/2, 7/6(3).
The Cincinnati Masters allowed
Vavasour to get some revenge over
Caladrini, the homecrowd propelling him to a tough 6/2, 6/7(4), 6/4 win.
In the US Open, #6
Matt Flashman took the crown, defeating
Caladrini in 5 sets in the finals, 6/7(1), 7/6(6), 6/3, 1/6, 6/4.
The Shanghai Masters saw a return to winning ways for
Caladrini as he beat
Vavasour easily, 6/2, 6/4.
The Paris Masters saw a close finals between
Caladrini and
Vavasour, Caladrini again winning 6/4, 4/6, 7/6(9), in a nail-biter. Truly a passing of the torch here as the former dominant world #1 Vavasour has lost consistently to Caladrini this year.
A similar result in the World Tour Finals as
Caladrini got the better of
Vavasour again, 6/7(6), 6/4, 6/3.
Player watch:
Luca Caliari is ranked in the top 200 in the junior rankings at age 15+. He's progressing decently although it's frustrating to see crazy high exhaustion at times making him miss entire practice weeks.
Richard Large is progressing a little slower it feels and that's party because I had to wait about 14 weeks to get him off the "free agent" heap. That may be a factor in terms of his overall progression because of less effective training. Ranked in the top 600 at this time.
My former player
Omar Al-Sadt was picked up by another trainer and, in year 370, is knocking on the doors of the top 100. I'm going to claim some credit for his progress
