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Lexington 50K Challenger [outdoor hard]Rd1 preview: Jamie opens his campaign on the hard courts of Lexington against American Brendan Evans. Evans is currently ranked 343, just over 50 places lower than Jamie but he is a former world junior no 2 and in 2004 he won 3 out of the 4 junior grand slam doubles titles: Australian Open, Wimbledon and US Open. Jamie and Evans have played once before, on the junior circuit in June 2004 when Evans won 6-1, 6-3 on the grass courts of Roehampton. Evans' recent form has been fairly impressive, he's narrowly failed to qualify for the ATP events in Newport and Indianapolis in the last couple of weeks and in June he played several futures tournaments in the USA, winning one in Rocklin and reaching the semis of another in Woodland. It'll be a tough match but if Jamie is to achieve his goal of making the top 240 and US Open qualifying, by the end of August then this is the sort of match he needs to win. As Jamie said last week "I have a short space of time in which to do it. I need to go out and get after the ball !" Baker v Evans is 3rd on stadium 2 at approximately 7pm GMT.
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Rd1: J Baker [GB] lost to B Evans [USA] 2-6, 7-6[5], 4-6
Report: Jamie's bid to gain revenge over Brendan Evans narrowly failed with a 2-6, 7-6[5], 4-6 defeat last night. Jamie took a while to get into the match while Evans burst out of the blocks, breaking early on and establishing a 4-1 first set lead. Jamie was broken again, serving to stay in the set at 2-5 and it looked as if the match was racing away from him. However, Jamie gradually worked his way back into the match, taking the 2nd set to a tiebreak which he took with 1 minibreak. Both players were now playing some excellent attacking tennis from the baseline, moving each other from side-to-side with heavy, topspin forehands and often finishing points off at the net. Jamie broke to lead 3-2 in the final set but then played a poor service game, missing too many first serves and Evans broke straight back to level things at 3-3. The set then went with serve until the 10th game when Jamie was broken, serving to stay in the match at 4-5. This defeat means that Jamie's ranking will drop 9 places to 298 next Monday as this week he was defending points from reaching the semis of a 10K futures event in the USA this time last year. However, Jamie will now have no points to defend until August so hopefully he can take full advantage of that in coming weeks. His next tournament is the Vancouver 100K Challenger, Jamie has missed the cut for the main draw so he will have go through qualifying which starts on Saturday.
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Jamie will be really disappointed with that result not least because it was such a close match and the 3rd set could have gone either way and Brendan Evans has gone on to reach the semis. It's a shame that Jamie hasn't really been able to take advantage points-wise of the fact that he's been a direct acceptance into the Aptos and Lexington main draws because in the next 3 challengers [Vancouver, Binghampton and Bronx], the fields are a lot stronger and he's going to have to qualify.
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