The NZ Nationals gets under way today.I am sure over the next few days some interesting results and match ups will occur.
Top Seed Davis Cup Stalwart Dan King Turner at 375 ATP should start favorite for the Wild Card prize at next year’s Heineken Open.He will come up against Jaden Grinter in his first match... who will defeat Victor Klintcharov...I will bet my house on it ..but no one will take the bet that's the problem.Grinter 19 one of New Zealand's top rated juniors ...has not set the world on fire with average results at Futures in Austria earlier this year.He has pushed King Turner in their last two head to heads.The field has many former and present New Zealander's who have or are on college scholarships at American University's.Seeded to meet King Turner is Ben McLachlan who is from Queenstown and plays for the California Golden Bears-CAL.Ben has played some future events in the UK and USA and has had some great results.This will be a very interesting match up should it eventuate ...the old brigade vs the new brigade.4th Seed is Sebastian Lavie the same age as McLachlan 20.Lavie has been based in France for his junior training and has been playing Futures he is 794 ATP ranked.The good thing about this tournament is to see where the players sit amongst their fellow countryman.Cameron Norrie is 64 ITF junior ranked and it will be good to see how he steps up against the more experienced players. The one thing that irks me is that New Zealand Juniors spend far too much time and money playing ITF junior tournaments , if good enough get into the tough tournaments early I say.. Norrie has no senior ATP activity as yet. Lavie looks to have a good run to the semi's.
The Bottom half should be very interesting also.The third seed Sean Berman is an interesting entry. Berman is well known to many here commencing his junior tournament days with Coach Chris Lewis and then followed Chris to the states.He split from Lewis and had some USTA backing before arriving in Australia where they also helped him out.He is still listed as a USA player on the ITF players site. Berman has a 731 ATP ranking and has been playing futures with some reasonable results in the country's not on everyones preferred holiday list. So is this the start of Sean becoming a New Zealander again? or does he think he has a chance of the Wild Card. Finn Tearney an outstanding player for Pepperdine University will be seeded to meet Berman. College vs Tour I get excited when these type of matches happen in a local event. It gives the eye a good look at the different paths players take and then measure the success tennis wise.At the end of the Day the college players have a degree and something they can fall back on if the tennis tour does not work out. I RECOMMEND that tennis coaching is not an option for the smart ones.The bottom quarter looks like a cake walk for second seed Artem Sitak. Is 557 ATP ranking and he is coming off a futures win in Cambodia recently.In fact Sitak has beaten Dan King-Turner a couple of weeks ago at a local tournament. Also in this section is CAL's Ricky McLachlan,another player to watch out for is 18s National finalist Kyle Butters 15 who was defeated by Connor Heap also 15 ...not taking anything away from these two boys but really TNZ two 15 year olds fighting out the 18s final!!!On top of two 15 year olds who also fought out the girls 18s national titles.Great effort from these younger players , but the eye reads more into these results than the scoreline.There are some noticeable players that have not entered or pulled out, such is the climate for local tournaments, sometimes its better to keep with the hype than have a reality check.Over the next few days I will keep readers posted and no doubt my candid comments which are just my opinions but obviously a lot regard highly to keep coming back to the blog to read : ).
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