What a performance from two little known rising stars in British tennis, Colin Fleming and Ken Skupski. The duo beat the number 1 ranked doubles team in the world in straight sets in only their second full ATP tour level win.
Since Skupski and Fleming joined forces in 2008 they have been rapidly climbing the doubles rankings and are now ranked in the 100 best teams, a decent run at Queens and Wimbledon could see both players break into the doubles top 100 players and the team in to the top 50 doubles team.
Colin Fleming from Broxburn in Scotland and Ken Skupski from Liverpool added to their good first round victory against Andrei Pavel & Horia Tecau 76(3) 64 on Tuesday. That match was duo’s first ever full ATP tour level win and their second was a major upset.
Cruelly though very few people will have got to see Brits victory as The BBC or Europsort did not show the match, as the players entered court, the BBC stopped their coverage on the red button. I’m not 100% sure why the BBC are not covering the doubles at Queens, it may well be a TV rights situation similar to why Sky cannot show doubles when they cover the masters events.
Despite being broken early in the first set Skupski and Fleming broke back and broke again to claim the set and single break in the second set was enough to see them to victory.
In contrast to some of the other British players these two have not been handed out countless chances with wildcards for Queens and Wimbledon. Fleming had only played 2 full tour level matches before this week and Skupski 1.
Skupski and Fleming will next face 5th seeds Lukasz Kubot and Oliver Marach who took out Andy Murray and Lleyton Hewitt in the second round.
Skupski is currently the 4th ranked best British doubles player and Fleming 5th best. Fleming took a 2 year sabbatical from tennis to finish uni and worked for a year, since returning he steadily improved and recorded numerous good result on the challenger circuit in both doubles with Skupski and singles, recognised recently with his place in the Davis Cup after Andy Murray pulled out. Fleming is currently the 10th ranked best singles player in Britain.
Fellow Brit Jamie Murray earned a much needed win with his partner Jonathan Erlich against Leos Friedl & David Skoch, the British-Israeli combo won in 3 sets 7-6(5) 3-6 10-3(super tie-break). They will next play 7th seeds Jeff Coetzee and Jordan Kerr.
8th seeds Ross Hutchins and Aussie partner Stephen Huss went out in their first match to Julien Benneteau & Michael Llodra 7-5 6-2. Hutchins is Britains number 1 ranked player.
Well done to Ken and Colin, these two are really on the rise. Shame it was not on TV, you would think with today’s “red button” technology that they could show every court live for the whole day. The cameras are allready there and the BBC doesnt actually need any comentators, but i’m sure some apprentice Sports reporters would happily cover it.
How they can’t even show the matches on court one at Queens is also very poor.
Ken Skupski is a role model for all of those players who have been rejected by the so called experts of tennis. This result is the equivalent of a semi professional football team defeating Brazil and yet the media especially in his home town covered very little of this amazing result. BBC are a disgrace for not showing the quarter final on Friday when Ken Skupski and Colin Fleming had two match points for a place in the semi final of the AEGON Championships at Queens, London but could not take them as they went down to fifth seeds Lukos Kubot and Oliver Marach in the late evening on the centre court of Queens.
The two Brits took the first set 6-4 and then had 2 match points in the tenth game only to be pegged back and eventually lose the second set 6-7. In the professional tie break again Fleming and Skupski took lead of 5-3 but in the Kubot and Marach pulled it back and went on to take the set 10-7 as the light dimmed on the centre court of Queens
Ken is a former college player at LSU Louisiana State University
The two Brits have been given a wild card for Wimbledon
Thanks for your comment Art!
It is indeed a disgrace that BBC did’nt screen the match – The TV cameras are allready there and set up – If they don’t want to employ any comentators thats fine, they could just left the cameras rolling!
It’s a shame Liverpool (merseyside / Northwest) media never got more into. The Scottish media did seem to put an effort to shout about the team as Colin is a Scotsman. It was interesting that it was the BBC Scotland guy that did their one and only bbc interview (proabably their to cover Andy Murray to be fair).