Anyone for a bit of Boggobash ?

Drew · Dec 18, 2008

Anyone for a bit of Boggobash ?

jamatthews · Strong Club Player

Utterly ridiculous. British tennis journalism strikes again. yawn

Not just the Bogdanovic (although him losing 4 Davis Cup matches is far from big part of year). Sharapova won her 3rd slam, including playing the best match and tournament of her career. Even with the injury she's going to cherish this year alot.

Count Zero · Tennis legend

Drew wrote:

After all Alex has increased his ranking over last year and this year coming will be the 5th year in a row he has stayed within the top 200

and will still end the year as GB No2, despite not winning a professional match in about 3 months!!

Neil Harmens attitude to Boggo this year has, in my opinion, not been very professional, from the incorrect story on extra racquets in Argentina to the failure to mention his injury at the DC. (quite happy to slate him for losing a match, but failing to disclose the full facts surrounding it ? - if i did that in my job i'd be liable for misdescription)

The Hoose · Satellite level

It's got to have some British interest - with someone the average reader will have heard of - in the losers column so Boggo was always going to be in. It's Chris Eaton in the winners column that I think's more outrageous.

johnnylad · Tennis legend

I agree with the Hoose - Eaton being a winner after a two-week year is a disgrace and it peddles to the pimms brigade who only think tennis is played for 2 weeks a year

James · Satellite level

Yes - no offence to Chris, who gave everyone a lot to talk about during Wimby, but the rest of his year has been no where as spectacular and the fact that Mr Harmen has deemed him a 'success story' would suggest that he's just another Andrew Castle, i.e doesn't follow the tennis season away from Wimbledon and a select few other top tier tournaments.

And I think that we can all openly admit that Boggo hasn't done as well as we had hoped he would in 2008 but does a 20 place ranking drop + a few DC losses really warrant being tagged as essentially a 'flop'?! In my eyes, no.

And to think that Mr Harmen is the 'voice of tennis' to many people out there who don't follow the game - a sad state.

OldEchoMan · Social player

I do not normally feel the need to defend myself but in this case I think perhaps I should. Firstly, it would help if you could spell my name correctly but that's just an incidental, if a touch wounding to the ego!! I would argue vehemently that I am unprofessional or that I have anything personal against Alex Bogdanovic, indeed those with longer memories and less happy trigger fingers might go further back into the past and read some of the tremendous reviews I've given him down the years. A previous coach once said I was the only man who reported his career honestly. (The racket story was given to me in good faith and printed in the same manner). I suspect that I have stood up for him more than most in the past but I felt that this year, his Davis Cup performances - he did lose all his singles matches if memory serves me right - were not up to the standard we, or I am sure, he would have wanted. Hindsight being a wonderful thing, he should not have been at the top of the 'loser's' list but I can't go back on that now.
Chris Eaton happened to capture a lot of imaginations during Wimbledon, he qualified in brilliant style, beat a highly accomplished player in the first round and gave an excellent account of himself against Dmitry Tursunov. In anyone's eyes, that ought to mark him down in the winner's column.
Just to let James know that I covered 16 tournaments in 2008, not including County Cup!!
Merry Christmas to one and all and happy reading in 2009.
OEM.

seagull · Hall of fame

Thanks for the response Neil - although not everyone agrees with what you write (and it would be pretty boring if they did!), the fact remains you are one of the few National correspondants that are writting about the game and the Times coverage is better than most.

Are you commentating on 5Live for the Aus Open?

jamatthews · Strong Club Player

FD has already described Pashanski as "a clown on grass" & Neil Harman, in today's Times, unlike the agency report it used yesterday, accepts that he is Chris' R1 opponent & has this to say in his review of the draw:

Chris Eaton's reward for success in the qualifying competition is a match against Boris Pashanski, a clay-court loving Serb who has played only two grass-court matches and lost both. As gift horses go, this one ought not to be ignored, even for a Briton ranked No 659 in the world.

Although I would say beating a homophobic racist is always worth a spot in the winner's column.

-- Edited by jamatthews at 14:55, 2008-12-19

Spectator · All-time great

NB: Written before I'd seen OEM's response -- and subsequent comments!

Mr. Harman's credentials can't be disputed -- and the points about the need for name recognition in the list are well taken. Likewise it's true that in the terms the general public is interested in -- ie, success during Wimbledon -- Chris Eaton was the big "winner," aside from Mr Murray, and hence a logical inclusion. But it would have been nice to slip a sentence in his paragraph that indicated that other less recognised British tennis players had achieved in other contexts. Moving people on from their preconceptions, and all that?

In re: Boggo. Strictly speaking, Boggo was indeed "a loser" from the Davis Cup -- insofar as it clearly had a negative impact on him, not because he is "a loser" in the colloquial sense. And I don't think that Harman's comment is aimed so much at him as at the LTA -- Harman was quite clear in advance of the Davis Cup that he queried the choice of players, and the closing sentences seem to be a continuation of that argument.

But like others, I do worry about the impact not only on Boggo but also on other younger/less experienced players of the constant harping on the Davis Cup losses (and here I don't simply refer to the newspaper piece in question, but to the reporting he's faced in general). Yes, he lost the matches. But he wasn't favoured to win either to begin with; he was injured for one of them; and he didn't disgrace himself in either. I don't know enough about him or his training to know what he could do in order to improve, whether he should be working harder (or is already working hard enough), etc. But it's not his fault he was called up, and he shouldn't be the one to have to face a barrage of criticism for having tried against the odds.

Indeed, under those circumstances, what does it do to him to have his attempts constantly thrown back at him? And what does it say to other players? Is the message that if you are sent out into a situation where you are unlikely to win, and then don't win, rather than being at least reasonably grateful for what you can offer, the great British public will turn on you for what you can't? Hardly an incentive to encourage the young, is it?

-- Edited by Spectator at 14:58, 2008-12-19

-- Edited by Spectator at 18:16, 2008-12-19

Drew · Dec 19, 2008

OldEchoMan wrote:

I do not normally feel the need to defend myself but in this case I think perhaps I should. Firstly, it would help if you could spell my name correctly but that's just an incidental, if a touch wounding to the ego!! I would argue vehemently that I am unprofessional or that I have anything personal against Alex Bogdanovic, indeed those with longer memories and less happy trigger fingers might go further back into the past and read some of the tremendous reviews I've given him down the years. A previous coach once said I was the only man who reported his career honestly. (The racket story was given to me in good faith and printed in the same manner). I suspect that I have stood up for him more than most in the past but I felt that this year, his Davis Cup performances - he did lose all his singles matches if memory serves me right - were not up to the standard we, or I am sure, he would have wanted. Hindsight being a wonderful thing, he should not have been at the top of the 'loser's' list but I can't go back on that now.
Chris Eaton happened to capture a lot of imaginations during Wimbledon, he qualified in brilliant style, beat a highly accomplished player in the first round and gave an excellent account of himself against Dmitry Tursunov. In anyone's eyes, that ought to mark him down in the winner's column.
Just to let James know that I covered 16 tournaments in 2008, not including County Cup!!
Merry Christmas to one and all and happy reading in 2009.
OEM.

In OEMs defence I do agree that he is far from a true boggo-hater. I do believe he would rather see Alex win than see him lose just to knock him down. He also has stated that he should not have been top of the losers pile. Alex did have another poor DC tie...and I think it was made worse by the way he started both those singles ties. He could have won both.

Happy Christmas & a good new year to you OEM. Fingers crossed for break through year for someone with a Union Jack on their back !

Count Zero · Tennis legend

Thanks for your response OEM, apologies for misspelling your name, but as my avatar points out that's not my strong suit.

You have indeed written some very good articles on Alex in the past, which is why the more recent change stands out. I remember an excellent one back in the summer of 06 about seeking approval on his own merits. It disappointing that the racquets issue was an reported to you incorrectly, but I guess the truth of needing 2 new ones for sponsorship reasons wasn't so interesting.

James · Satellite level

OldEchoMan wrote:

I do not normally feel the need to defend myself but in this case I think perhaps I should. Firstly, it would help if you could spell my name correctly but that's just an incidental, if a touch wounding to the ego!! I would argue vehemently that I am unprofessional or that I have anything personal against Alex Bogdanovic, indeed those with longer memories and less happy trigger fingers might go further back into the past and read some of the tremendous reviews I've given him down the years. A previous coach once said I was the only man who reported his career honestly. (The racket story was given to me in good faith and printed in the same manner). I suspect that I have stood up for him more than most in the past but I felt that this year, his Davis Cup performances - he did lose all his singles matches if memory serves me right - were not up to the standard we, or I am sure, he would have wanted. Hindsight being a wonderful thing, he should not have been at the top of the 'loser's' list but I can't go back on that now.
Chris Eaton happened to capture a lot of imaginations during Wimbledon, he qualified in brilliant style, beat a highly accomplished player in the first round and gave an excellent account of himself against Dmitry Tursunov. In anyone's eyes, that ought to mark him down in the winner's column.
Just to let James know that I covered 16 tournaments in 2008, not including County Cup!!
Merry Christmas to one and all and happy reading in 2009.
OEM.

Are you reiterating my point or counteracting it - 16 tournaments barely scrapes the surface of the hundreds of tournaments that are played each year. I could forgive you if you had written a slightly inaccurate article on our own site but to do so for a national newspaper and then to suggest that '16 tournaments' is a number to covet and allows you to comment on a player who has played 38 tournaments this year alone is quite disconcerting.

On top of this surely even you and your '16 tournaments' a year bank of knowledge do not truly believe in your labelling of Boris Pashanski on grass as an 'accomplished player' - he is far from it and would be nowhere near the top 100 if grass were to be the sole tennis surface. And I would bring into question the audience that you are targeting with your articles- yes, Chris Eaton captured the imagination of the millions of The Sun readers but surely a man with your tennis knowledge should be able to look past such bravado and examine the true statistics. It's a pity that you feel the need to dumb down your reporting to cater for those who watch/follow little other than Wimbledon.

However, I hope you appreciate that all of this is simply 'banter' and I genuinely appreciate your tennis columns and from time to time enjoy some of your more in-depth [non-gossip] pieces of work.

And a Merry Christmas/Happy New Year to you OEM and I look forward to reading your AO coverage.

-- Edited by James at 15:33, 2008-12-19

The Hoose · Satellite level

Not sure it's fair to accuse OEM of not following enough tennis! Nor to expect that the Times readership is made up of people like ourselves, who care passionately about the lower rungs of British tennis. I imagine OEM's target audience is the sort of person who likes to read through the sports pages but has just a passing interest in tennis. I'm therefore impressed that so many of his articles have so much meat on them for us to get stuck into.

James · Satellite level

I think that it's a justified criticism. On this forum there are several posters who follow tennis every week of every year and who produce written articles, reports etc on every event that happens during every single one of them. If its possible for a group of amateurs to do this then surely it is not beyond the realms of possibility that we should expect a professional journalist to at least follow suit.

And with regards to the target audience, I am constantly disappointed at tennis articles published by many factions of the press that pander to 'controversy hunters' rather than real fans - perhaps singling out OEM was a little harsh to be fair.