Guy Smith-Bingham defends his Lacoste British Open Singles, which takes place at Queens Club over the 10 days,facing one of strongest fields in recent seasons. Amongst the British based players only World Champion James Male is absent.

Smith-Bingham is seeded to meet Harry Foster in the final, but both players face potentialy tricky semis, Foster should meet Neil Smith who has just won the Professional Singles and Smith-Bingham will probably meet Ali Robinson who is seeded 4. The 3rd round matches also promise some interesting encounter with the 8th seed,former World Champion John Prenn likely to play the competitions most dangerous floater Guy Barker.

5th seed Mark Hubbard, beaten finalist in last weekends Professional Singles, plays Neal Bailey inhis first match and will have to produce his best form to see off Bailey.Toby Sawrey-Cookson,who at the moment is occupying the twilight zone of being neither professional nor amateur, is another very tricky opponent and will give 7th seed Alex Titchener-Barrett a testing time in their putative third round match.

6th seed Tim Cockroft runner up to Guy Smith-Biingham in this years Amateur Singles looks to have the easiest passage to the 1/4 finals of any of the seeds, facing Richard Carter in his first match and then probably Robert Wakely. Tim beat Harry Foster in the Amateur Semi this season so their projected 1/4 final will be an intersting encounter..