Veterans, Hopefuls Feature in 2009 Australian Open Men’s Qualifying

January 13th, 2009

Veterans, Hopefuls Feature in 2009 Australian Open Men’s Qualifying
by Richard Vach

The Australian Open men’s singles qualifying draw has been released, with few surprises but a number of interesting match-ups and appearances by veterans attempting comebacks.

Chilean journeyman Paul Capdeville is the top seed (make sure to get your name on that ‘lucky losers’ list), and another journeyman, Switzerland’s George “I Beat Pete at Wimbledon” Bastl, meets No. 32 seed Rik de Voest.

No. 28 seed Somdev Devvarman and Prakash Amritraj square off in an all-Indian battle, and veterans attempting returns from injury or just another taste of the main draw after fallen-off results include Dominik “The Dominator” Hrbaty, Germany’s Florian Mayer, Canadian Frank Dancevic, and Belgian Xavier “X-Man” Malisse.

American hopefuls in the qualifying are Brendan Evans, Kevin Kim, Ryan Sweeting, Wayne Odesnik, Scoville Jenkins, Amer Delic, Zach Fleishman and Rajeev Ram. John Isner won the USTA invitation-only wildcard tournament, gaining entrance to the main draw.

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Filed under: Australian Open, Tennis
Tags: 2009, Australian Open, Men's Qualifying, Xavier Malisse

4 Comments for Veterans, Hopefuls Feature in 2009 Australian Open Men’s Qualifying

MMT Says:

Wow – I know it’s qualifying, but some of these Americans have been around while and don’t appear to be making much progress. I’m glad the USTA finally got their heads out of their you know whats and have started adopting the French Federations approach to developing players.

January 13th, 2009 at 1:31 pm

Richard Vach Says:

MMT — You mean having playoffs and awarding the winners rather than handing out wildcards to flavor/players of the year?

January 13th, 2009 at 1:59 pm

MMT Says:

No, no sorry – I meant, there aren’t a lot of young up and coming US players trying to qualify at the Australian Open. A lot of these guys have been around for a while and just haven’t cut it, but there are few new names to the list. I was hoping to see a few more American names I’d never seen before trying to qualify.

I only referred to the French because the had 16 players in the main draw at the Australian Open last year – that’s right 16 – and it seems they’re producing a lot of good new young players.

January 13th, 2009 at 2:44 pm

Von Says:

Rich:

Can I make a suggestion that in the future Tennis.X supplies a link to the draws of tournaments in their articles, or even in the side-bars, especially the Grand Slams and Masters Series. It makes life a lot easier for us/me than to have to go searching for them. Think of it as going that extra mile for the greater good, in view of the fact that the ATP website is so difficult to navigate. Merci.

January 14th, 2009 at 12:07 am

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