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Old 08-24-2016, 09:38 PM   #469
Brian Swartz
Grizzled Veteran
 
Join Date: May 2006
In the 16 months I've been running this I don't think I've gone this long between updates. I'll have to skip the usual Q1 rankings update. However, the thread must at this point be spammed with the results of various tournaments covering almost two months of time in the game world.

Miami Masters

An interesting start. Shyam Senepathy split a pair of tiebreaks with Russian Efim Lipovsky, who I knew well when he was younger, before easily taking the third. Any Masters-level win is a good event for Senepathy. He took only four games from Sampras in the next round though. All of the other four got off to good starts with relatively easy wins at least in their first matches after byes on the starting day. There were three other low seeds that departed early, none of them particularly noteworthy. However, it was a bit surprising to see Bjorn Benda bow out in a tight three-setter to American Joseph Skirrow.

Shreya Ujjaval, seeded 20th, made Iglar earn his third-round advance in a good 7-5, 6-4 effort. A big match for Prakash Mooljee at this stage as well ... he knocked off Garreth McCuskey 6-3, 7-6(3), avenging the loss earlier this year. In general it was not a good round of 32 for the higher seeds; the Peruvians did particularly poorly, while a couple of US players(Gilardino and Srbulovic) got further than expected. They are playing at home, and the Americans don't have any great players right now ... but they sure have a lot of good to excellent ones dotted all over the place as threats on a bad day for the favorites.

In the fourth round, Mooljee did not do as well as Ujjaval as he was obliterated 6-3, 6-1 by Antonin Iglar. I expected him to lose, but I was hoping for more of a fight. He was not pleased to see Marcek win after losing the first set for the second straight round(over Cirakovic), and in this group of matches the top seed won all of them. Girsh beat Andronikov and Mehul stopped Trulsen, both in fairly routine two-set affairs.

The quarterfinals then featured the top seven plus Cestmir Marcek, who seemed to be forgetting that he was about to turn 33 years old. He wasn't done yet either, rallying from a set down for the third straight time, this one over Gustavo Caratti. The world no. 3 is no minor scalp, even on a hardcourt. Took a tiebreak in the last set to get there. Impressive work. Girsh easily brushed aside Gaskell, but Anil Mehul was surprised 4-6, 7-6(2), 6-3 by Bourdet. An even match(both players won 99 points) but once again it was a case of seizing the moment. The top Frenchman is perhaps beginning to play up to his own press.

Iglar obliterated his countryman in the first semi as expected, and Girish Girsh stopped Theodore Bourdet in a closer second one, 7-6(0), 6-4. He didn't serve well, but his worlds-best game from the baseline was more than enough. Girsh went on to score a big win over a slightly-fatigued Iglar in the final, 7-6(5), 7-6(1). Could have gone either way but it was the correct result. That brings him to 7 Masters Shields, one shy of Mehul's career total. An important win to give him a chance to take back the top spot later in the year.
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