Kevin Anderson will kick off his Estoril campaign on Thursday against recent Bucharest champion Guillermo Garcia-Lopez. Borna Coric and Rui Machado are also in second-round action.
Guillermo Garcia-Lopez vs. (2) Kevin Anderson
Anderson and Garcia-Lopez will be going head-to-head for the third time in their careers and for the first time in four years when they collide in round two of the Estoril Open on Thursday. Both of their previous encounters have gone Anderson’s way; 6-3, 5-7, 6-4 on the hard courts of Miami in 2011 and 7-6(1), 7-6(4) later that season indoors in Stockholm.
Garcia-Lopez will be brimming with clay-court confidence after capturing the Bucharest title last week. The 31st-ranked Spaniard is 17-8 for the season, which includes an additional title in Zagreb and a fourth-round appearance at the Australian Open. Garcia-Lopez defeated Roberto Carballes Baena in the Estoril first round, while Anderson got a bye as the No. 2 seed. The 17th-ranked South African is 17-9 on the year and coming off a semifinal showing on clay in Houston. Underrated on the slow stuff, Anderson has more gas in the tank than Garcia-Lopez and should use it to survive a high-quality affair.
Pick: Anderson in 3
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Borna Coric vs. (WC) Rui Machado
Machado has already made the most of a wild card into his home event in the form of his first ATP tournament match victory since this week last year (Oeiras, which is also in Portugal). The 31-year-old upset Joao Sousa 7-6(5), 6-3 on Tuesday. Ranked No. 227 in the world, Machado owns four Futures titles already this season in addition to three Futures runner-ups–so he has a ton of matches under his belt.
Up next for the veteran is a first-ever meeting with Coric, who has made the jump from Futures and Challengers to the main tour. The 18-year-old Croat ousted No. 6 seed Jeremy Chardy 6-2, 6-4 on Monday for his ninth ATP-level match victory of the 2015 campaign. Coric reached the semifinals in Dubai and is coming off a second-round showing on the clay-courts of Bucharest (beat Sergiy Stakhovsky, lost to Ivo Karlovic). The surface and home-court advantage may give Machado a chance, but the discrepancy in talent will be too much to overcome.
Pick: Coric in 2
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Saw Coric at Indian wells and he was very impressive, and fun to watch. I like him in 2 and GGL in 3.
Dimitrov beat Golubev
The question of should there be hawkeye on clay just answered in the Coric match. Shocking overule from the umpire. Ball a good few centimetres out. Coric’s face said it all.
what happened
Machado´s ball bounced off the net and landed few centimeters out of the line. after few second Machado obviously demand that chair umpire checks it. he then found the wrong one and all that happened on 30:40 for Machado on Čorič´s serve. point was replayed. Borna showed very good mental strenght, Machado had many lucky moments in the match but in the end that didn´t help him.
thanks.
At 5-5 30-40 down on Coric’s serve in the second set Machado hit a shot that caught the net, popped up and dropped wide of the sideline. The ball was called out, Coric, knowing it was wide, busied himself getting balls etc ready to serve from the deuce court as the umpire ran over to check the mark. When Coric turns back to serve he sees the umpire is indicating it caught the line and is visibly gobsmacked. Runs over and points animatedly at a mark wide of the line and argues his case for a minute or two amidst a chorus of boos from the Portugese crowd. They replay the point and he did end up winning it against the odds with a great shot, but went on to get broken and lose the set. Luckily he managed to refocus and get the job done in three. The umpire clearly was clearly looking at the wrong mark, it looked well wide to the naked eye and replays confirmed that.
No doubt Mcenroe would claim it adds to the excitement, but clearly a situation in which Machado, or Coric, can check hawkeye there would have been better for everyone. The umpire might not have make a fool of himself and an enemy of Coric by making a bad decision under pressure, Coric wouldn’t get animated and frustrated and the crowd wouldn’t get on his back. And Machado wouldn’t gain an unfair advantage, something most professionals don’t want and certainly don’t deserve. Excitement isn’t a justification for a less fair and accurate system of officiating. Man eating spiders running across the court at random intervals would make things more exciting, but that doesn’t mean its good for the sport Mr Mcenroe!
Just about anyone would agree.
Perhaps not a certain priviledged one :-). But other than that…
In that one (extremely rare) instance, you are right. (I’ve seen one or two similar cases.)
However, in 99.9999% of cases, the mark seen is the correct one and is more accurate than hawkeye (hawkeye is not 100% accurate).
So, in this case, I agree with the priviledged one. (somewhat ironic given my moniker).
Yes hawkeye isn’t 100% accurate but it is inarguably more accurate than a naked human eye interpreting a mark left in some clay. Inarguably. I don’t know how anyone could think otherwise. It’s possible both for a mark to be inconclusive and for a human to interpret it incorrectly, or even to look at the wrong mark.
Wrong mark yes I already said that. Inconclusive no. If there is no visible gap between the mark and line it is in. Hawkeye can only see a two dimensional shadow and cannot look underneath the ball. In addition, camera accuracy has its own margin of error.
Nothing is as accurate as the mark on clay. Also Hawkeye is less accurate on clay compared to hard courts.
This is why Hawkeye is not used on clay.
I should maybe add that I play a lot of clay court tennis,and while we don’t have the benefit of a professional umpire or line judge team, even when we know exactly which mark to look at Its sometimes just not possible to be certain whether it caught the line or not. Having a system like hawkeye to make those calls takes the element of human error away and means even if decisions are incorrect by a hairs breadth on very rare occasions, they are consistently wrong and in that sense fair.
Hawkeye’s margin of error is 3 to 5 mm depending on what you read.
Visual inspection of the physical mark on clay in 99.9999% of cases is certainly more accurate than this.
Some reading,,,
“But there are things you might not know about Hawk-Eye. For instance, it cannot track the ball to a millimetre even though one might get this impression when watching some replays; in tennis, those shots shown to be touching the line by a hair’s breadth and called in might actually be out and vice-versa.”
http://theconversation.com/out-goal-the-ball-was-in-but-could-hawk-eye-get-it-wrong-20741
And another…
“Today I lost the first set in the last point because I saw, and the referee (umpire) knows because he saw the ball outside,” Nadal told reporters. “The mark of the ball was still on court and it was outside but in the challenge it was in, so that’s unbelievable.”
According to the disappointed Spaniard, even umpire Roland Herfel agreed the ball was out, but umpire’s are instructed to go with the Hawkeye call.
“I say to him, ‘look, the ball is out’, and he say ‘I know’.
“The truth is put Hawkeye on clay this year and we will see. You will see what’s happening with Hawkeye sometimes.”
Even Youzhny agreed the ball was out.
“It looked like it was out,” said Youzhny. “I saw the mark, but I just took the challenge because it was a very important point. When it showed it was good I was a little bit shocked
http://www.rediff.com/sports/2007/mar/02nadal.htm
#HereToHelp
#Humb1e
Here is the match point Nadal lost because of hawkeye. You can see that the amount that the ball overlaps the line according to hawkeye is less than the margin of error.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wHeIMbs-pk
As an aside, David Mercer is an idiot.
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“The Hawk-Eye Innovations website[19] states that the system performs with an average error of 3.6 mm. The standard diameter of a tennis ball is 67 mm, equating to a 5% error relative to ball diameter. This is roughly equivalent to the fluff on the ball.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawk-Eye
Also, just for clarity, when I say hawkeye is not 100% accurate, I am of course referring to the technology, not myself.
I’m always right 100% of the time with no margin of error.
#HopeThisHelps!!!
Haha. Fair enough! I say lets reconvene a year from now and see where we are.