Davis Cup - Euro Africa Zone I Play-offs - GBR v Poland 18-20 September 2009

fart1 · Junior player

RE: Davis Cup - Euro Africa Zone I Play-offs - GBR v Poland 18-20 September 2009

Granny · Social player

indiana wrote:

Shhh wrote:

WTF is the point of John LLoyd ??

I remember after the previous dc tie one journalist wrote that John Lloyd's only job is to keep Andy happy. I think that's true - he's so terrified that Andy will walk out on the team that he lets Andy decide everything, including who's on the team.

We'll have to see what happens next time when presumably there will be no input from Andy - perhaps he will be sensible enough to play Fleming & Skupski in the doubles.

baxi2 · Lower Club Player

I agree that Andy is being allowed to have input on team selection. Its rumoured that he doesnt like Goodall. It would have been an interesting tie against the Poles with Flemski on Doubles and Bogo and Goodall on singles-I think it would have increased our chances greatly. For Murray to think that Evans can perform at this level is a little optimistic as Evans is probably on a false ranking. The fact he lost to a player several hundred places lower shows that Dans true ranking is probably between 400 and 500! This tie should have been won but the best team was not chosen,they are all worried about pushing Andy's nose out of joint and Lloyd/Draper should be held to account for not insisting the correct team play.

Spectator · All-time great

Given that Flemski is an established pair -- albeit of lower rank -- that has won some high-profile matches over well-ranked opponents, I too would have liked to see them play the Davis Cup.

But I wonder whether the press and public are also partially responsible for the selection process. Andy Murray's comments to the press made it very clear that he had been stung by the accusations that he wasn't sufficiently committed to the Davis Cup. Therefore he WAS going to play in this tie, even if doing so was medically dubious, or indeed inadvisable.

The doubles were clearly going to be critical, as Dan Evans was too inexperienced to be able to guarantee a point.

Now imagine that Murray hadn't played doubles. Even for Flemski, winning that rubber would have been a pretty steep ask. If whoever played in Murray's place had lost and thus consigned the team to relegation, some elements of the press and public would almost certainly have attacked both Murray and John Lloyd: the former would have been accused of lack of commitment, and John Lloyd would have been criticised for substituting a World No. 100 (roughly) for the World No. 3, whose presence (it would almost certainly have been argued) would have been more likely to win us the tie. To the general public, the numbers alone would make any choice other than Andy Murray seem entirely illogical. If you don't follow tennis regularly (and we're all agreed that most people don't), you're not going to understand why a singles ranking doesn't necessarily translate into doubles success . . . or why a person or pair that almost no one has heard of could conceivably be a safer bet than a superstar.

So the advantage for Murray and Lloyd of Murray's playing was that whatever happened, the view of the public at large would be that both of them had done the best they could. Any other choice offered at best a marginally greater chance of success, and at worst widespread condemnation. Not much of a choice there, alas.

-- Edited by Spectator on Saturday 26th of September 2009 11:07:28 AM

-- Edited by Spectator on Saturday 26th of September 2009 11:14:56 AM

indiana · Tennis legend

Spectator, if John Lloyd chose a team that he did not think was the best to win the tie ( even for whatever conciliatory or placatory or indeed political reason ) in my mind it would make him ( EVEN MORE ) just not fit to be Davis Cup captain.

C'mon, pick a team a different way from what you suspect is the best because the wider public would probbaly not understand ?!

If anything is part of his job, it is surely to put out what he considers to be the best team ( and players for each match ) and to be able to explain and justify that choice.

I entirely disagree with you ending your hypothesis with "not much of a choice". There is the choice of do the right thing to win the tie.

I actually hope ( and believe ) that he simply picked what he thought in his mind was the best team, whereas many folk here ( and that was before this week ) would have picked Flemski.

-- Edited by indiana on Saturday 26th of September 2009 11:49:34 AM

-- Edited by indiana on Saturday 26th of September 2009 12:03:25 PM

ForeverDelayed · Grand Slam Champion

The disappointing thing about the loss was that with Murray playing, all we had to was to win one rubber and we couldn't manage to do that, having had chances in all the matches we lost.

Evans gave Janowicz a decent match on Friday but just couldn't hold having managed to break every time and if he could have stolen a set then it could have been different.

We had what seemed like a million break point chances in the doubles and if we'd only taken a couple of them we would have won that match.

And in the 5th rubber, Evans outranked his opponent 350 places on merit (Przy was injured but has been playing solidly for 18 months now so if ranked that low because of poor form) and we never got close to winning that.

In hindsight, maybe Flemski should have played the doubles given their great run last week, but the chances are that they have lost to the Poles anyway (although I'd say Clement/Llodra are a better team than them so maybe not...), and Flemski's last couple of results before DC were disappointing (if I'm remembering correctly I think they lost 1 and 4 to a pair of WC's in their last event), so it's understandable why they weren't selected.

Lloyd has managed to take us from the world group to Euro/Africa zone 2 now and no matter how liked he is by the players (although that is debatable whether he is at all), that's not acceptable and we need someone else to take charge.

The equivalent would be a team being relegated from the Premiership to League One... no manager would survive that as the results have not been good enough.