Bruno Corbalan:

Has mostly been pottering around the top 200 mark. Challengers have guys close to the top 50 and higher in them. Even the CH3s which are worth less points. Without a seeding it makes it hard to move up as you are bound to run into one early. However whenever he is in the top 200 he can't play futures. Still he is getting decent exp off of practise competitions at the moment so I am not too worried just yet. Too good for futures and not good enough for challengers. Burmann still leads the charge for Bruno's year and has managed to reach the top 30 including a win in a 250 series event. It will be interesting to see how he continues.

Natalio Arivzu:
Has caught up with Bruno physically and nearly technically as well. He is younger but is also expected to have a slightly shorter career overall. I tried one or two Amateur events but the exp was terrible in practise sessions because they were too one sided. You play against similarly ranked opponents so I have been giving him just singles competitions and as many as I can without over playing him. He has reached 306th and is still winning all his practise matches but only just. Maybe top 300 will be enough for him right now. He has an FT3 event upcoming that should get him there. Then he can take a long break from all competitions as he goes back into a proper training schedule. Still it has been a painful time for him growth wise as he has not been getting the exp he should have. If only I had stuck with futures or he had gotten luckier draws in his first two. Aside from a semi final appearance at an FT1 in Portugal those are his only losses and he has an FT1 win as well.

I have also been working to improve his clay court ability to max out his specialisation there. Overall not the busiest time period, that will come when Bruno starts threatening the top 100. Technically speaking both players will improve slightly physically in the coming while and so it will be a while before they start losing their edge. As such I am not too worried about rushing them just yet.

Bruno Corbolan:

Bruno has settled himself in the 150-200 range. Getting higher is tough. I think he will do a big jump in one go. He has made a few top 4s in various challengers but has yet to make a top 4 seed and has found himself outside the seedings a few times. Indeed his best result is the semi final in CH2 which is just the same as a win at FT1 level. He has plenty of them and would have more if he was allowed to play in more futures.

Interestingly the doubles have gone far better bringing him up to 266th including a win in a CH1. Several of those wins were with Natalio when he had to play challengers for a few months. Not sure where he goes, he should be reaching further in the challengers but he ends up having to go through too many big matches. He has gotten a few upsets but unless he gets the win in the competition it simply is not enough extra points to make his way up the ranks. 2 or 3 wins would be best to ensure a top 4 rank in all challengers really.


Natalio Arvizu:

At the start of the year he quickly broke the top 200 due to having played his fair share of competitions. This meant he had to play a few challengers until a few of his big results from last year went out of date. I have not kept up the quick rate of playing competitions so he has less competitions counting towards his total. He is being challenged in his practise competitions so I am ok with him hanging around the 200 mark for the moment. He got on well in doubles pairing with Corbolan for doubles competitions when he was in challengers getting to 334th in doubles. 216th for the moment in singles. Futures also give him more games as he wins them easily meaning I can get in more practise weeks. I have even seen him get wins against top 50 players in practise.

An issue with both players and the quicker rate of play is that they need plenty of extra training from Drescher. I am thankful I have the trainer but I frequently waste spare fatigue when I am busy or asleep. I can avoid it if I remember to spend some time training whenever they get too fresh at least but I have to remember, each training session takes a few minutes and a couple are needed each time. Still I should remember I have no fear of them getting too tired, they are both exceptionally fit and hard working players. This is their big advantage and I need to take advantage of this as much as possible. They still get plenty of benefit, realistically I am only missing out on a few extra exp as I have been decent at it and so not the end of the world. Maybe a point or so of skill over the course of their careers so far.

Bruno Corbalan:

Since skipping Wimbledon he has had a decent period. He even managed to get a seed for the US Open thanks to a few higher ranked players not showing up. It went precisely to seeding making the 3rd round before losing to Clericat who is the number 1 ranked player. He even managed to take the first set before losing. No shame in that and a nice 90 ranking points. He has tended to be winning a few more challengers, including one against Vilkas who was a contemporary of Arvizu on hard. Vilkas is a hrad court specialist so it was a a good win even if it came with home court advantage. He did lose a final against Vilkas as well on hard courts though. Still he has enough challenger wins to finally get him in the top 30. To finish off he entered into Paris masters. Both singles and doubles to get through the quiet new year season with enough form. Unfortunately he lost in round 1 of qualifying for the doubles so he will need a futures competition in the new year to keep form up and he can only enter those in doubles due to his ranking. In the singles he did not have a ranking but he got a nice draw round 1 before facing against Colanovic. The Serb was the number 1 ranked Junior player the year in between Corbalan and Arvizu, in fact he dominated if memory serves but was ranked 15 here. The Serb had a bigger serve and was the stronger but is slightly slower and not near as good from the baseline which ended up being his undoing and Corbalan knocked out the seed in straights. He lost the 3rd round to Lazutin who partially specialises in indoor which few players do.

So it certainly looks like he can rise up the ranks from 27th but maybe not to the top. He finishes the year in 28th and next year will be aiming for 16th or maybe even 8th at a stretch. The big issue next year is that he needs to beat a few higher ranked players. He has to enter all majors/slams due to his top 30 finish to the year and will likely be ineligible for any Challengers which were easy ranking points for him this year (you have to be ranked 32nd or worse for those). It would also be nice if he could pick up ranking points from the world cup but there are enough Spainish players ahead of him to make that really unlikely. He has a fair few ranking points to defend in the Australian in a few weeks so we will see where he is after that. His progress has largely stalled with only minor progress on his skills as he ages and his physicals are slowly starting to decline. He is still improving but is unlikely to get much higher. 73rd to 28th in a year was good progress at least.


Natalio Arvizu:

His own jump was 126th to 46th. Top 32 next year is a minimum requirement. He was also unlucky in both the slams he was in this year facing seeds in both the French and the US. As any slams have to count for seeding it is a rough one on his rank. Hopefully he can get lucky in at least one next year as entering them is great for experience. He is still carting along a few too many semi final appearances in there as counting competitions. Still as his rank improves he will get easier runs to the final and they will disapear. None of his big results run out for a while yet either. I had hoped that he could make the end of year season count but it was too congested and he had some poor performances in there as well. Maybe I could have picked better competitions as well. I had thought to enter him into on emore but decided he would be better of training, one competition win won't help that much at a challenger level. Better to be well prepared for the next season and he had lost enough experience with the other challenger events. He is also starting his slow decay but should have a bit more improvement than Corbalan left in him.

He wants about 300 more points next year, each competition win that replaces a semi final appearance is 60 -> 90 points (if he manages a win at CH+ level) so it should be doable. Especially if the slams go a bit better this year. World cup matches are not out of the question in the next few years. He is ranked 4th and needs to reach the top 2 to make it in. There is a 29 year in there who should drop off rapidly even if he is 8th right now and a 25 year old who should be touchable in the next few years in spite of a good career. That just leaves Coya (Arvizu is 22) who will likely be joining Arvizu on a future team. In terms of up and comers who could hit that level it is only Olega who is barely in the top 100 at 22 who could possibly make a push. The big issue is how to knock the 25 year old off that perch quickly (or reach Coya, currently in 31st place).


Neill Summerset and Nicolas Acero:

Both are improving rapidly, they are improving physically through age and when your base skill levels are low they are cheap. Acero is going to go out of JG5 level now, he was generally winning them and the new year means all juniors take a big jump in the rankings as the old juniors are kicked out. Summerset probably needs to go at that level a bit more. His skills are not up to task yet and has only a final appearance to his name (that was to Acero though). He should at least start to get ranked at them at least.

As they are going to be entering the same competitions from here on out most of the time (and for all the big ones) I will just seperate by competition as opposed to by player.


Bruno Corbalan entered the Qatar open in both singles and doubles for form. He was unseeded and lost to Huinaguenta in the second round but won the doubles so far representing my first pro title! Natalio Arvizu on the other got bounced quickly from the Auckland competition. In the Australian he matched his seeding to get to the last 32 and faced his country mate Caravia then. He may have been ranked 12th but he is a clay specialist and so Corbalan won the first two sets handily before they traded tie break sets to send Corbalan through to another 4th round encounter. Here his opponent was the Dutch Vennemars who is ranked 7th and likes the hard courts. I was hopeful it was possible but unfortunately it was not to be. Another 4th round loss for Corbalan (his 4th). Arvizu was seeded 31st and met Lazutin in the 3rd round. It went to 5 which was impressive against the 8th seed but not enough to advance. Malmberg won beating Huinaguenta who are both owned by the same manager so great points there except then they (and his two other players) went AWOL. Manager simply stopped playing. It is a little frustrating when they are in the top region of the game (he has the current no 1, no 8 and no 16). They have been entered in the French and Wimbledon but will likely have little form and be easy pickings. Still they affect seedings which is a big thing for some players. With 2000 points from the Australian Malmberg is likely to stay in the top 32/16 for the next year.
He also entered a pair of 250s in Argentina and France, losing to Caravia on clay and Lefebre (a French top 50 player coming up the ranks. The second one hurt and he should have gotten the win and the extra ranking points. Both involved semi final losses which gives 90 ranking points. It won't help him now but may be handy as other results go out of date. Pity. Natalio on the other hand came 2nd in a Challenger in Kazan which brought him back into the top 32 that he has been bouncing in and out of. He also got the chance of a clay 250 competition but was knocked out by the Romanian top seed Gherea in the semi final but a decent performance.

Indian Wells was a good opportunity for points as he only achieved 10 here last year. He managed that after winning his second round tie but lost the third round to the 13th seed Belgy. A tough match that went to a final set but close is not good enough. Arvizu made the 3rd round and came across the hard court specialist Calmette. Beating a top 10 on their favoured court is a big ask and he bowed out gracefully at this point. In Miami the following week Bruno had more points to defend and needed to match a 4th round appearance just to not lose ground which would require beating a higher seed. The seed he had to face was Jan Dieter Baur and he was crushed in the first set before easing himself to the next two by a break each. Good result against the speedy German. He could not do better than the 4th round with a loss to Calmette, the aging French player was relevant enough to keep the 5th seed here. Arvizu matched his Indian Wells performance losing to another top 10 player in the Spainish Ambrosio. Jonathan Stagg won both these masters in a row but Clericat ended up taking back the number 1 spot now that Malmberg is not longer playing.


Bruno did then play a 250 in Morocco. He was seeded 4th and thanks to the top seed Jan Dieter Baur getting upset early was able to make it to the finals. At a 250 competition semi final is a base level for him and a final is a bonus he has only managed once before. The final against the 12th ranked Colanovic went to 3 sets but it was on clay giving Corbalan the edge in the final set for his first singles pro title! I had really began to worry he would not manage one of these so great to see him come through a bit. Arvizu was in the same competition but was upset in the quarters. In Monte Carlo he faced Vilkas, a contempory of Arvizu in the 3rd round and won in 3 to make the quarters. He went against Burmann then who is the reigning French Open champion and the top clay player. He showed it in the first set breezing past Corbalan before Corbalan managed to sneak a tie break in the 2nd and take the 3rd by a single break! In the semi final he went against the Italian Mariani who was unseeded but had faced stiff opposition making it to the semi final. He won the first set but lost the match. Probably one he should have won but he has never made the final in a competition that big. Wihtout a seed Arvizu ended up against Stagg in round 2 and lost easily. Sabiri won another masters title here. Thanks to a weird quirk of being able to take a better result over a poor Monte Carlo result, Malmberg regained the no 1 spot in spite of not playing for a few months. The following week in a 500 competition in Barcelona the strength of the Spainish on clay was shown. Corbalan got revenge on Mariani in the quarters before beating Ambrosio in 3 (lots of tight matches on clay going his way recently) to make the final. All 4 semi finalists were Spainish showing home field advantage and the fact that a lot of the Spainish focus on Clay. This meant Arvizu was also out at this point as he fell to Caravia. He failed to add to his 250 title as this time he lost in 3 sets to Caravia. Still it is 300 ranking points.

With more success than expected recently Corbalan was in danger of being overplayed with 2 masters and a slam in the next month. The first Masters which Arvizu skipped but Corbalan can't and was in Madrid so he did get home field advantage again. His form was impressive breezing past the 7th seed Sabutin and the 3rd seed Sabiri. The first set he lost was getting bagelled by the unseeded Gherea to make his first masters final! It was against Burmann. Burmann is undoubtedly the better clay player but Corbalan won on clay only a few weeks ago. Unfortunately this one went to form and he lost 6/2, 6/2. Still it shows Corbalan might be able to win a major title in the near future. He was now very close to being overplayed and was upset in round 1 to Amati who has been doing better this year and is a clay specialist playing at home. This gave Corbalan a break before the French at least and avoided a meeting between Corbalan and Arvizu who faced Amati in round 2. Arvizu was careful to avoid the upset. He dropped the first but managed to knock out Amati. He followed this up with another 3 set win against Calmette and he beat his fellow countrymate Coya to become the only unseeded player in the semi finals. There he faced world number 1 Stagg and in spite of being bagelled in the second he came through to face Sabiri in the finals. Again it took 3 sets but Arvizu got the job done! My first ever major win.

In the French Corbalan was seeded 14th and Arvizu was 17th thanks to a few missing players adn faced off of 23rd seed Kao in the 3rd round. He lost one set to a tie break but otherwise walked into his 5th time in the 4th round of a slam. 4th in a row as well and first time at the French. These 4th rounds should come easier now that he is getting into the top 16 seeds as well. He was against 6th seed Calmette who is getting on in years and prefers hard courts. Still over 4 close sets Corbalan could not get it done. He is still waiting on his first trip to the second week of a slam. Arvizu was looking for a follow up to his clay masters title and a good result here. Unfortunately he met Burmann in round 3, they had split the mandatory clay masters between them but one had to go out in round 3. The first two games went to tie breaks and Arvizu lost both. Burmann finally won a set cleanly in the 3rd to send Natalio home. Burmann retained his title here cementing his status as the clay king. Bruno has reached his goal of the top 16. Hopefully he can use this to push on. With Malmberg still not playing he drops to 4th and Stagg takes over again at the top. Clericat drops to 3rd with Sabiri taking 2nd. It is still taking a while for the generation before Corbalan to move over entirely with 5 of the top 10 still from that generation. Arvizu is 18th but should move forward soon. He is also now the top Argentinian and will finally get a world cup start next year. It will be handy for ranking points/ experience.


Wimbledon saw Corbalan breeze through the first round before getting Borot as a tough second round opponent. It is difficult to get breaks on grass and Bruno suffered for giving away two easy breaks. 2-0 he managed to clean up his serve a bit and both the next two sets went to tie breaks with Corbalan thankfully coming out on top in both. The final set also reached 6-6 but in Wimbledon there is no final set tie break. You keep playing till there is a two game gap. In the end Corbalan finally got a break to win 4-6/3-6/7-6(2)/7-6(2)/9-7 in an epic marathon. It is tough for Borot who lost in spite of winning at least 6 games every set but I happy he is through. The next match up was against Duane Ayer, the 22nd ranked American. A tough prospect on grass and indeed beat Arvizu in the junior Wimbledon final but can struggle elsewhere with poor baseline game. Here Corbalan's new found skill in tie breaks and he lost the first set to one. He managed to sneak a break to avoid a tie break in the second set but lost the third on a tie break. The fourth saw him give up a break early and he could not recover. So he loses 90 points in comparison to last year and first time he does not make the 4th round in over a year. The loss may be understandable but it is these types of losses that will stop him moving up further. Arvizu lost the opening set but then eased through to the 4th round. Malmberg was in his section and so he had an easy route through as the 4th ranked player is horribly out of form since his manager left the game meaning he had to face no seeds on his way there. Solheim was going to be a tough opponent. Arvizu lost the first set to a break and the next two to tie breaks (stop me if this sounds familiar). Unfortunately another chance to make the final 8 goes a begging. Corbalan got some luck in tie breaks which disappeared and Arvizu did not. Frustrating but it was at least a second 4th round appearance for Arvizu.

A 500 level competition in Germany for Arvizu was a case of good but not good enough taking Clericat to 3 sets but still losing in the quarter finals.

Arvizu skipped Cincinnati but played Canada. As ever Corbalan is obliged to play both. He also had a quarter final appearance to defend in Canada. Arvizu was unseeded in Canada and went out to the similarly unseeded Ezulike in round 2. Corbalan had a tough draw with Jan Dieter Baur who was a great player just starting to slide down the rankings. Two tough sets saw Corbalan go out in round 1 in another Masters. He needs to win these sort of Masters.


The US Open saw Corbalan ranked 16th and Arvizu 18th. Both lost sets in round 1 but made it through to the 3rd without much more trouble. Arvizu lost to Belgy in 4 while Corbalan made it back to the 4th round against Bassagoti. There he faced Calmette back on Calmette's favoured hard court. A frustrating match that saw Corbalan broken twice after leading 40-0 in a game. He went down in 4 which is respectable against a strong player but still no quarter final. Stagg cemented his hard court dominance here with a win.

Arvizu had his first appearance for the national side against Spain on Clay. He lost both matches but gave Clericat a good run for his money and got plenty of experience. They were knocked out and so he won't see national action again till the new year.


Both entered the indoor 250. The frustration kept coming for Arvizu as he lost in the second round. Corbalan kept going to
giving him his 4th win against Lazutin in a row and his 2nd major title.


Arvizu largely stopped attending the big competitions as he was unlikely to get a seed. He will have to next year though. In Shanghai Corbalan made it to the 3rd round before being knocked out by Calmette, it was a base line performance to my mind and better than last year's first round exit. In the Kremlin Open 250 Arvizu somehow ended up being the top seed. It was indoor so he did not completely dominate his opponents but he got the job done for his first 250 level competition.
In the Swiss Open Burmann used home advantage to knock out both Arvizu and Corbalan in the quarter final and semi final respectively. An example of Corbalan using his higher seeding to his advantage.
Paris was again a bit of a squib as Arvizu messed up in round 1 and Corbalan in round 2. I mean Corbalan lost to an ex no. 1 but he should have managed at this point of his career. Clericat won at the age of 29 to ensure entry into the WTF finals. He is the 3 time defending champion and has made the final on each of his 4 appearances so far.

In the end Corbalan finishes in 15th and Arvizu in 17th though there is about 300 ranking points between them. Hopefully they can improve next season, Arvizu will have national team games to help but both will have a lot of points to defend in the clay season. There are places they can get more in the rest of the season but it will be especially tough for Arvizu if he does not repeat in Rome. This will be the first season that Arvizu has to do the all the major competitions. Corbalan made the 4th round in 3 of the slams along side his Madrid semi and Monte Carlo Semi as well as the two 250 level wins. The crown for Arvizu was obviously the win in Rome. Aside from that he had a 4th round appearance in Wimbledon and a 250 win of his own. Both have made good strides with plenty of top 10 wins and winning competitions vs the best in the world. Corbalan went from 25th to 15th and Arvizu from 33rd to 17th.


Clericat made it 4 in a row for the finals in spite of being seeded 7th. Looks like the only way he is losing that now is if he fails to qualify!

Corbolan went to defend his title in a 250 competition in Morocco. The quarters saw him against Amati. Only relevant in the clay court and even then rarely makes enough ground in the big competition. He was still enough for Corbolan here which saw Corbolan lose a bucket load of ranking points. Monte Carlo saw Corbolan defending a quarter final appearance. Round 3 saw him against Burmann which was unfortuante. The two time French Open champion knocked him out. Meanwhile Arvizu continued his good season knocking out the world number 1 Stagg before eventually getting knocked out by the improving Ambrosio in the semi finals who beat Burmann in the final. In the Barcelona Corbolan matched his performance here last year and beat Clericat to make the finals. Ambrosio won but at least it stopped Corbolan losing yet more ranking points for another week.


Madrid was worrying for Corbolan, he was defending a final appearance so plenty more opportunity to lose ranking points. First round he was against Micheal Flynn, an aging Irish man who should not have been an issue. Flynn likes clay but still losing in two with home advantage was embarrassing and saw Corbolan fall to 26th in the world! Arvizu did a bit better but lose to Ambrosio in the 3rd in 3 sets. Tough draw for him, he needs to make more of the clay competitions. Still he has risen to 12th in the world. To change things up in the Italian Open with a loss to Ippolito Carosi. Bah and indeed he drops to 26th as some big results go out of date. Will have to get some new ones soon.


In Rome here it was a bigger deal for Arvizu as he was defending the title. Anything else would see him lose ranking points. In round 2 Corbolan had a rematch against Flynn and this one went to form with Flynn only winning 3 games. Those lost ranking points still sting. The third round put him against country man Clericat but he has beat him on clay before. He manages it again to really cement the decay of the ex world number 1. Burmann in the quarter finals was too much but not a bad performance. Given he was knocked out in round 1 a year ago he should claw back a few of those lost ranking points. Arvizu had a decent draw. Sabiri in round 3 is not bad on clay and neither was Stagg in the quarter finals. They may be world no 1 and 3 but they are not the same threat on clay. He then got a rematch against Vilkas, this time on Arvizu's favoured surface. It was a tough match and realistically he was outplayed. He also nearly through it away losing 3 match points on his own serve to get broken before breaking two games later and taking the match. All of which saw him in the final against Burmann. Another tough match that was decided by Arvizu taking a few more of his break point chances. In the end the point score was 106-105 in Arvizu's favour as he won 7/5, 3/6, 7/5. He retains his Rome title to avoid losing those ranking points. Now on to the French!

The first 3 rounds of the French were relatively easy for both Arvizu and Corbolan. Arvizu did lose a set in the 3rd. Another competition with both players in the 4th was good, Arvizu had Ambrosio and Caravia was Corbolan's opponent. Both tough clay opponents, especially the 3rd seeded Ambrosio. Arvizu had to come back from a set down twice but somehow came up with the upset for my first ever slam quarter final! Corbolan then came up with another 5 setter against Caravia to stick both into the quarter finals of the same slam! Both into week two is a great performance. Their opponents were each other. Arvizu was probably favourite and I was up for him as he would have a greater chance of moving forward. In the end Corbolan took it an early advantage and pressed it to win in 4. The semi final was Corbolan, Vilkas, Stagg and Burmann. Corbolan had Burmann, by far the worst opponent to get on clay. He lost the first two sets before taking a two break advantage in the 3rd. He won it and took another 2 break advantage in the 4th. Suddenly Burmann came roaring back for a deserved win. Would have liked to see what Arvizu could have done there. Still the result reverses Corbolan's failings in the Masters and brings him back to 16th. Arvizu also makes the top 10 with a half decent chance of the top 8 for the year end.

In the Junior French Virgilijus Gramauskus knocked out Acero in the 3rd (he is getting repetitive here).