Archives for May 2010

The reaction of the normally mild-mannered Alex Corretja said everything.

Andy Murray's coaching staff are usually stoically poker-faced, so much so one can't help wondering if it's in the contract, but when Murray hit two huge forehands onto either side of the baseline to win a point early in the third set against Tomas Berdych, the Spaniard almost needed restraining.

He roared, lifted himself from his seat and opened his arms as if to say "that's the way to do it." As a former French Open finalist, he should know.

Earlier a good amount of head-shaking/scratching/holding appeared to have Corretja in a state of fractured anxiety. His man was being eaten for petit-dejeuner by an inspired opponent and there was nothing he could do.

Berdych hit the ball so cleanly one imagined a new supersize sweet-spot on his racket of choice. He thoroughly deserved the win.

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Familiar names, old foes.

It's always interesting to amble around the outside courts at Grand Slam tournaments to spot players we've come across in recent years on Davis Cup duty.

Following Great Britain in the lower reaches of the competition allows us to talk to these lower-ranked players, hear their stories and dreams for the future. They can often provide more articulate interviews than some of our own team members.

Step forward Michal Przysiezny of Poland who played in Liverpool last September and beat Dan Evans in the decisive Davis Cup rubber.

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It needs enormous mental strength at any level to regroup after losing seven games in a row, and I thought Andy Murray's turnaround against Marcos Bagdhatis was really impressive.

I don't know how many times you've lost seven games on the bounce but it happens to me frequently, only I don't tend to go on and win - I just think the clubhouse is too tempting a venue by that point.

Losing serve at the start of the fourth set was arguably more concerning for Murray than losing the previous six games.

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I thought we saw the 2008 women's champion on Thursday, but was that really her?

Ana Ivanovic lost 6-3 6-0 to the impressive Alisa Kleybanova in the third round and, despite signs of improvement, was way too inconsistent to live with the power-hitting of the Russian.

The 22-year-old Serb then came into the interview room with a peculiar summary: "I didn't think I did too much wrong out there. I was a little bit unlucky with so many line calls on my serve and just everything going out."

A lot did go out. A lot hit the net too. Kleybanova was excellent but for Ivanovic there is much to do.

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When Paul Annacone leaves the Lawn Tennis Association in November it will end the culture of big-name, big-money coaches in British tennis. The era of excess will be over and expenditure on the balance sheet will look a little less top heavy.

In 2006, the new LTA regime fell in love with the concept of spending riches on celebrity coaches. A big-spend for quick wins.

A holy trinity of Annacone, Brad Gilbert and Peter Lundgren was hired on a combined salary of more than £1m per year.

Gilbert would coach Andy Murray, Lundgren would coach the Davis Cup team and Annacone would be men's head coach. By the end of the year, all three will be gone.

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When Justine Henin announced her retirement on 14 May, 2008, I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

The defence of her French Open title was just a few weeks away, followed by a better-than-ever chance of winning a first Wimbledon, and then the incentive of another Olympic gold medal in Beijing - all stated ambitions.

Completely out of the blue, all that was over.

She became the first player to quit as a reigning world number one. It was nothing short of incredible.

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Isn't it amazing, the journey Andy Murray has travelled from 2005? Back then he was the stick insect of the tour, an 18-year-old who broke down at Queen's, then Wimbledon, and struggled to go the distance at the US Open a few months later.

Here we are now, five years later, and he's without question one of the fittest guys on the tour.

Monday's 4-6 6-7 (5-7) 6-4 6-2 6-1 victory over Richard Gasquet in the first round of the French Open was the Scot's seventh in his last eight best-of-five matches, and that's an incredible record.

It's the reason he goes in the gym, runs up and down South Beach in Miami, and it's why he got back into full training in the last month or so after giving it a little bit of a miss in February.

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Just a few moments after we were talking up Ernests Gulbis on the radio - "one of the in-form players, a threat on the clay, an outsider for the French Open" - the Latvian was out.

His retirement in the third set against Julien Benneteau, after tweaking his hamstring in the fourth game of the second, was the on-court story of the day in my mind.

Everybody was talking about Gulbis - his performances in the build-up weeks had made him the obvious outside bet.

Roland Garros also sensed an attractive story to follow over the fortnight. Here was a lavish talent with a big personality, not afraid to speak his mind, and an equally big game capable of causing upsets.

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Andy Murray is sitting behind a desk fiddling with the microphone, as usual.

I have yet to discover whether this is a nervous twitch or, perhaps more likely, a more appealing pastime than talking to a room full of middle-aged hacks.

Anyhow, the British number one player is pondering the finest clay-court performance of his career so far.

A "tough question" apparently, which is taken as a compliment, and it takes him a while to seize upon a shortlist.

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On the face of it, there appears nothing Roger Federer lacks.

The world number one has 16 major titles, the career Grand Slam, more than $50m in career prize money and the seductive-yet-subjective label, applied by many former champions, as the best player of all time.

He is embracing family life with wife, Mirka, and twin daughters, Myla and Charlene, who are seasoned international travellers at nine months old.

Certainly, he is all smiles as we meet in a first-floor room at the Caja Magica in Madrid, completely free of entourage, his white tracksuit top and black baseball cap boasting the now familiar "RF" logo.

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British tennis is in a continual state of underachievement, as any regular reader of this blog may have noticed, but even more obvious is the fact things would be much worse without the efforts of thousands of people who devote their lives to the sport.

The vast majority of these coaches, teachers, organisers and volunteers have no control over how the riches are spent. They get mystified, along with the rest of us, at the frequent comings and goings from head office. Buzzwords like "pipelines", "pathways" or "frameworks" tend to pass them by.

But people who have worked for 20-30 years in British tennis are still trying to make a difference, often in increasingly trying circumstances. It's not their fault we can't beat Lithuania in the Davis Cup.

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