So according to The Times, Dan Evans isn’t to blame for GB getting beat by Lithuania in the Davis Cup. I’m not entirely sure why that is, seeing as he got beat by a guy ranked well below him. The way I see it, of all the matches we lost, that was the one we should have won, according to the rankings and based on previous experience. Sorry, Dan, but you’re not blameless in my book.
GB lost to Lithuania in the Davis Cup today. Quite simply, that’s an embarrassment. John Lloyd must shoulder most of the blame; Dan Evans looked like a rabbit in headlights for his 4th straight Davis Cup match, this guy is clearly not feeling comfortable on court and John Lloyd sitting beside him should be providing assistance in this area. He’s clearly not. Time to go, John, before you’re pushed.
Was at Yoshi’s Davis Cup match yesterday. Everyone in the crowd kept on shouting “Come on, Josh” which I thought was funny since he actually gets called Yoshi. But anyway. He could so easily have won. He was totally bossing his opponent around in the first set but his unforced error count was just through the roof, he just kept on missing. His backhand could do with some more work, mind you.
We’re screwed now, I reckon. 2-0 down after the singles, we have to win all the remaining ties. There’s seriously very little chance of that happening. I won’t make any of the other games as my daughter was bored half way through the 2nd set of the first match, so trying to get her to sit through any more matches just ain’t going to happen.
I really should have played tennis instead of badminton. Quite why my parents didn’t notice I could play a bit is beyond me, it’s not like they didn’t have a clue since my cousin was the best player in the country. D’oh. Hey ho, such is life.
So it’s been three weeks since I last posted on here appearently. It’s flown by.
It transpired that Jo didn’t have the mumps, instead she had an infection in her salivary glands and this then caused an abcess in her submandibular gland which had to be operated on under a GA.
She’s a lot better now, thankfully.
Other than that, I had another set of “symptoms” kick my ass during the week, but it seems to have passed now. I had the pins and needles in my right hand, mainly in my palm, for about 3 days, plus I had myokymia in my right eye for a day and my balance went a little haywire in the middle of it all. Hey ho.
Things currently appear to have calmed down. I’m now remembering how to play the Maple Leaf Rag by Scott Joplin, which I’ve remembered three quarters of during the week; I learnt it many years ago but have forgotten it, and since I don’t read music that well and learn everything by ear, it takes me a few days to remember it all again. But I’m getting there. After that, I’ve decided to learn Fantaisie-Impromptu by Chopin, mainly because it sounds dead tricky but I suspect it probably isn’t.
And finally… I have been watching avidly as Federer gets knocked off his World #1 position. What I couldn’t understand was why the entire planet had forgotten how to work out ATP rankings as everyone, including the ATP themselves, seemed to think that Nadal needed to win in Cincinnati to get World #1 when Fed went out early. I spent a couple of days wondering whether I just couldn’t add until everyone then realised that players drop points when they do worse in a tournament compared to last year. So I felt a little better after that. And watching Murray demolish his opponents on his way to the final has been somewhat handy, especially because it was only a couple of months ago I was wondering whether his temper was going to get the better of him. Today he plays Novak in the final, and it could go either way, to be honest. I’m sitting on the fence on this one for a change.
Sounds to me like Roger Federer is suffering from sour grapes.
The best quote from this article has to be:
Not that I’m disappointed but I really would have thought he would have changed it in some ways.
So here we have the best player in the world, having been beaten in the first round of a competition that he really expected to win. But he’s beaten, and quite easily, by another player, and he’s not disappointed. Really? Bollocks. He’s completely gutted, and the reason he’s saying that Andy should have played differently is because he realises he’s been found out. Andy has the complete game; I’ve seen him play many times, and he can completely destroy opponents with his incredible attacking game, his stout, resolute defence and his ability to mix it up. Federer has all three, as he too has the complete game, but he’s just been beaten (for the second time) by someone who can do it too. I reckon Federer is realising he’s got some serious competition.
Why not just admit you were beaten by the better man today, Rog? Andy’s got your number.
Andy must be getting back to somewhere near his best as he managed another win against Guillermo Canas, who’s currently ranked #14 in the world. In the final he’s due to play Tommy Robredo who’s ranked #9. If Andy was fit and had been playing for a while, I reckon he’d win quite easily. As it stands right now though, things are not so certain. It should make for an interesting match.
So the GB Davis Cup Team are back in the world group after today’s doubles victory by Tim and Jamie. It has to be said, I thought Jamie would be the rock and Tim would be along for the ride, but it was mainly the other way around. Tim played a blinder and Jamie looked thoroughly shaky on his return of serves in particular.
Still, they got there. Have a good retirement Tim!
Jamie Murray seems to be the hottest ticket on the doubles market at the moment. He was unlucky to lose last night.
Andy lost in the 3rd round of the US Open last night, too late for me to watch it. Sounds like he wasn’t playing well. His ATP ranking is going to slip more now since he’s out earlier than he managed last year. Still, he’s just back from injury, so this time next year his ranking should hopefully be back up there again.
Since I wasn’t feeling that hot today, I missed the entirety of Andy’s match against Jonas. Sounds like his forehand is back in action though. And apparently he’s using a lighter racquet which should, at the very least, mean that he is less at risk of knackering his wrist again.
Next up is Hyung-Taik Lee who, let’s face it, we know nothing about over here. We were expecting him to play Guillermo Canas, but he got humped by the Korean.
Andy managed to play again today. He didn’t look overly convincing on his forehand the entire match, mind you. The report might suggest otherwise, and while I saw him hit a few at near-full pace, he didn’t really wind it up full power the whole match. It was, however, much better than his previous two outings and he didn’t really need to push it against this clay courter who, in truth, belongs on the challenger series.
So Jamie won his first Grand Slam title today, and well deserved it was too. It more than made up for watching <opinion>Mr Dull</opinion> win the singles title earlier in the day.
We have a Briton in the final of Wimbledon for the first time in quite a while. His name is Murray, but it ain’t Andy, it’s his brother Jamie. It did always seem slightly more likely that Jamie would win a slam before his brother, due mainly to there being a much smaller number of decent doubles players on the pro tour. That said, I’d always assumed it would be in level doubles, not mixed, but he and Booty went out yesterday.
My neighbour is related to the next big tennis sensation, apparently. He’s only 11. His brother, who’s 4, looks pretty useful on the court too.
What surprises me about Becker’s comments in this article is his (apparent) statement of “I can only judge it from the outside and what strikes me is that there are no good British teenagers participating in tournaments”. I suspect Graeme Dyce might not be best pleased about that statement. Maybe he’s talking about senior tournaments; at least I really hope that’s what he was talking about.
Bugger. After climbing 2 ranking places in the world to #8 while not hitting a ball in anger during his injury lay-off, it looks like Andy will slip down the rankings a fair amount since he’s going to miss Wimledon, where he reached R16 last year and got himself 150 points.
Not the end of the world, though. And better to miss this one than knacker himself again for even longer, potentially permanently.
I’d read, in the physical version of the paper last week, Pat Cash’s comments on Tim Henman and his opinion that Tim should retire. Ordinarily I’d have to agree; Tim’s form has been really poor this year, and it wasn’t brilliant last year. He’s so far this year only picked up a maximum of 5 ranking points at each of the tournaments he’s played except for one “countable” tournament in Las Vegas, where he got 20. That’s not a great return.
However, for some reason, I honestly think Tim still has enough in him to keep it going for another year or two. He’s not had much luck lately and it doesn’t take a lot to turn it around. I think packing it in now would be jumping the gun. However, if things have not improved by this time next year, then he really would need to call it quits before he makes a fool of himself.
He’s not at that point yet, though.
I’m so glad Nadal beat Federer again. I just can’t be arsed with Federer and his Steve Davis-like personality. Dull! Nadal is at least entertaining on and off the court. And who wants to watch someone who wins all the time? Hopefully Mr Boring is finally being caught by the other players on the tour.
I managed to miss Andy’s victory today at Indian Wells. I suspect the previous ladies match must’ve lasted about 12 minutes, but then it would, as their early matches are typically totally one-sided. It seems Andy didn’t have any trouble. I’ll need to sort out the times better for the next one.
Honestly, Indian Wells have a lot to answer for. Making out their tounament starts on a Monday but some players don’t play until the Sunday? Useless.
Anyway, Andy will play against a qualifier in the 2nd round after having a bye in the first, when he plays Wesley Moodie who isn’t highly ranked. But he’s one tall dude at 6’52 which, you have to remember, is only a couple of inches taller than Andy.
Things seem to kicking off around 21:00 GMT.