Week 34 - US Open Qualifying - 2008.

Count Zero · Tennis legend

RE: Week 34 - US Open Qualifying - 2008.

Vandenburg · Futures level

yeh but i disagree with people saying 'the forum is slagging off players' its better to be honest on opinion you have one a player than being fake and regardless if they read this forum or not

Yorkie · Lower Club Player

Vandenburg wrote:

yeh but i disagree with people saying 'the forum is slagging off players' its better to be honest on opinion you have one a player than being fake and regardless if they read this forum or not

Its what forums are for at the end of the day, i think this debate has been easily the best i've seen on here. There's always going to be people that disagree with others and thats what makes the world go round!

All i originally said is that Slabba is at best top 500 material, if he wants to prove me wrong and get himself even higher than he already is i'd be over the moon!

johnnylad · Tennis legend

FRom the US Open Open Player of the Day feature - (Sam Querrey today)

"So Tuesday was one of Querreys best days ever on a tennis court, close to the top right and right below winning Las Vegas. He was also asked about his most heartbreaking day:

I lost a challenger last summer in Great Britain to this guy James May, and I remember he beat me for one ATP point. I was at like 60 in the world and after he won he called his mom while I was still on the court and said he won. So that was probably the worst moment."

Go Jimmy May

indiana · Tennis legend

Yorkie wrote:

Vandenburg wrote:

yeh but i disagree with people saying 'the forum is slagging off players' its better to be honest on opinion you have one a player than being fake and regardless if they read this forum or not

Its what forums are for at the end of the day, i think this debate has been easily the best i've seen on here. There's always going to be people that disagree with others and thats what makes the world go round!

All i originally said is that Slabba is at best top 500 material, if he wants to prove me wrong and get himself even higher than he already is i'd be over the moon!

I agree very much that in my case, for a forum to have my respect, I expect it to accept people being able to give honest criticism of particular players or groups of players.

I for instance have been fairly critical of the direction that Andy Murray has been going at times in the past. I am now much much more positive, and have argued with some people that I see as still being too negative, but I respect they are entitled to their opinion as I hope they respect my opinion.

To be wary of critisising players, becuase they may read this forum is not right in my view. I would hope that they would prefer to read honest opinions and take these on board. They themselves will know when circumstances may have dictated that opinions wree ill-founded, and if they read, they should be prepared to take what they can from the opinions. If they are simply P***ed off by being badly crirticised, then it is they that have a problem.

Of course, criticism should be based on facts as known, but inevitably many of us will purely have statistics to look at, and if we interpret them wrongly, or certain circumstances prevailed, then this can be pointed out by someone who may know more about it.

To suggest folk should not comment on say what appears a string of bad results without knowing every fact behind them is just silly in my opinion.

But beware looking at the facts all on one side, i.e. like a football loss of 11-3, "but the second was offside, the third the full-back was tieing his laces, the fifth our centre half was fouled and we should have 2 penalties and we had one chalked off for offside. In fact 11-3 is a travesty , we deserved to win !" Yeah right, maybe the opposition also had some stories to tell you don't know of smile

Staistics never tell the full story, but they can be ivery indicative.

As for Slabba, I admit to some doubts, but they are more that he loses too many matches I would think he should win. I see him actually as maybe capable of getting to around 200 but not higher. The next year, as some have said, will tell us a great deal, and I wish him all the best.

john · Top national player

johnnylad wrote:

FRom the US Open Open Player of the Day feature - (Sam Querrey today)

"So Tuesday was one of Querreys best days ever on a tennis court, close to the top right and right below winning Las Vegas. He was also asked about his most heartbreaking day:

I lost a challenger last summer in Great Britain to this guy James May, and I remember he beat me for one ATP point. I was at like 60 in the world and after he won he called his mom while I was still on the court and said he won. So that was probably the worst moment."

Go Jimmy May

Haha, that's fantastic. Was that in Surbiton qualifiers then? One ATP point for qualifying??

Madeline · Admin:Moderator + Tennis Legend

No, it was Surbiton first round. I think Sam was wrong about the one point.

Malteaser · Junior player

Without wanting to cause an argument, I would like to simply disagree with Indiana re: criticism.

A healthy level of critcism is ok, but in my experience people and in particular sportspeople respond much better to encouragement than criticism. I would suggest that if players are reading this forum (and many of them are) it would be better to encourage wherever posisble and enjoy their successes than it would be to criticise and breed negativity.

We have plenty of negativity already abut British Tennis, there's no need for us to endulge ourselves further!

That's my two pennies worth.

Salmon · Tennis legend

^

steven · Tennis legend

I'm sorry I missed out on most of this debate, it looks like it's been fun. It's good to look at the stats, even when they give all seem to suggest different things - a lot better than criticising (or praising) with no evidence whatsoever.

I'm on both sides in this debate LOL - from what little I've seen of Slabba, I don't think he's top 100 material either ... which conversely means that as with Jamie B, I think he's done brilliantly to get as far as he already has.

However when the Shed was hyping him a couple of years ago, I didn't even think he'd make top 500, and for a while it looked like I was (sadly) going to be proved right, until he got a new lease of life late last year. I'd love to be proved wrong again by him getting into the top 100 and certainly can't complain that he's not putting the effort in, he clearly is.

There are two sides to the December points story too - the first is that yes, they probably were relatively easy points (though going to places like that is never that easy), but what's really impressed me is that unlike the other Brits who have played deep into December in recent years then died the following year, he's built on it.

Also, it's very unusual for a Brit to move up to Challengers and then win a main draw round nearly every time they play - most Brits take a lot longer to adjust. It's a pity that so often it is only one round, obviously, but it does mean his ranking is fairly broad based and not reliant on one or two big/lucky Challenger runs.

Given all that, and Bethan's point about Alex still making progress (ok he will drop a bit at the end of the USO - see top 25 table - but hopefully just a blip), I doubt there's anything artificially high about Slabba's ranking at the moment.

However, I do think this "the rankings never lie" mantra is rubbish. Like it or not, ATP rankings are hugely dependent on draws, illnesses/injuries of opponents/potential opponents, etc, especially when they affect the later rounds (where the points increments for each additional win are so much higher) and they don't even out over year, particularly not down at the lower levels where points are scarcer in the first place.

Finally, I don't think there's anything wrong with criticism, as long as it's balanced by positive stuff, not trolling (i.e. always criticising a particular player for the heck of it), backed up by some facts and people are open-minded about changing those opinions if more facts come to light.

Also, isn't it far better if we criticise someone for a bad loss and then get told why it happened (by the player or someone who knows them) than if we keep quiet and just assume they're a bit crap?! wink

In the end, what marks this board out is the quality of the info and of the debates most of the time and the fact that virtually all of us want any criticism we make to be proved wrong and are rooting for the players concerned whatever we're saying about them.

-- Edited by steven at 15:01, 2008-08-27

Madeline · Admin:Moderator + Tennis Legend

Well said.

indiana · Tennis legend

Malteaser wrote:

Without wanting to cause an argument, I would like to simply disagree with Indiana re: criticism.

A healthy level of critcism is ok, but in my experience people and in particular sportspeople respond much better to encouragement than criticism. I would suggest that if players are reading this forum (and many of them are) it would be better to encourage wherever posisble and enjoy their successes than it would be to criticise and breed negativity.

We have plenty of negativity already abut British Tennis, there's no need for us to endulge ourselves further!

That's my two pennies worth.

Fair enough. We will agree to disagree

For my part, I will applaud, encourage and congratulate where I think that is warranted and I will criticise and point out things that I think are going wrong, where I think that is warranted.

I do both, and have found myself more positive than others about some players at times, and also more negative about some players at other times.

For reasons already stated, I have no intention of changing from that.

I, personally, certainly never set out to breed negativity for the sake of it, but I will say what I think, both on the positive and the negative side.

ForeverDelayed · Grand Slam Champion

:re the Slabba is overranked debate...

If anyone 2 years ago had said that Keothavong would be a solid top 100 player, and would have reached the 3rd round of a Grand Slam (without the biggest cake draw possible), no-one would have believed them (I'd have said that she would lose in the first 2 rounds of a junior slam, as I was so unimpressed with her game)

And 2 years later, she's come on leaps and bounds and now is solid top 100 player, so it just shows that anything can happen if it all falls into place.

And on the men's side... anyone who saw Nadal at the start of the season (getting 1 game of Youzhny, the performance against Tsonga, losing to Seppi in Rotterdam, being taken apart by Djokovic and Davydenko at Indian Wells and Miami) wouldn't believe he now dominates the game, even on hard courts, and that improvement has come in just 4/5 months

Count Zero · Tennis legend

well lets hope boggo finds some of that juice