Is James Ward capable of breaking into the top 100?

James ward is currently sitting at 161 in the WR. He reached a high of 139 last August following a semi final showing at Queens Club and a win at the Vancouver Challenger.

Given that he has very few points to defend until the summer, his qualification for AO could be the start of a mini surge up the rankings. He has a winnable 1st round match and, should he do so, his second round match would good experience. He seems to be gaining in confidence and Davis Cup has given him some solid experience of 5 set matches.

Now that GB have gained promotion to Europe/Africa Group 1 the competition is going to get harder. GB will need a solid second singles player in order to avoid relegation again and so all the pressure is not on one singles player and the doubles team. I hope James Ward is that player

Is he capable of breaking into the top 100? Maybe

If so will he stay there? More doubtful.

As Boggo found breaking into the top 100 is no easy task. As others have found out staying there even harder. He's already 24 so although a crack at the upper reaches of the game is possible it would be asking a lot to see it then turn into a prolonged stay I'm afraid.

I read somewhere that 24 is the average age of breaking the top 100 (I think). I agree that he may not be a permenent fixture but he could be there or thereabouts for a while. Would be nice if he could.

Well, 24 is often quoted as the age by which a male player needs to win a slam if he's ever going to win one. OK -you do get the odd exception, but it is a young man's game.

As to breaking into the top 100, I guess that can sometimes take a lot of players most of their career to achieve. And that's why the LTA need to take a more reasoned stance on this. For every player a nation has that breaks into the top 100 there are many who don't make it. So for the LTA to have two or more such players they need to find sufficient talent to stack up their numbers challenging for such spots in the first place.

If you look at the US they've been struggling too whilst the likes of Spain and France now appear to have a conveyor belt of suitable talent at their disposal.

But we're talking about one man in James Ward and whether he can make it personally, nothing to do with the LTA or having others who can.

If he manages to win this first round match (it seems possible) he'll move back up to about 140 in the rankings. Then he'll have until Queens to earn as many points as possible. He's only defending about 50 points, so he'll need about 250. This is equivalent to a couple of ATP 250 semis (+ bits and bobs) or a couple of decent level challenger wins (+ bits and bobs).

It'll be tough, but if he can get a decent run of form, you never know.

dj you miss my point. If the question had been could one of say 3 or 4 players knocking on the door of the top 100 make it then my answer would have been probably, yes. The LTA should employ enough people with maths qualifications to realise that it's all basically down to statistics.

One Ward. One player close to the top 100. One chance of him making it.

Fast forward two years. Say Golding, Broady and Edmunds are all close to the top 100. Well, it should be fairly obvious that the odds are then more in our favour.

I agree, getting people up the rankings is a numbers game.

More people playing = more chances.

Yep, no doubt more players = more chance. There are a few promising looking players from the next generation but I am still hopeful that Ward can step up and bridge the gap. He doesn't seem to suffer from big match nerves in that Bogdanovic does but we will see how he copes with Davis Cup in Group 1.