I assume like this year's tournament,  it will be  two RR groups, with matches being comprised of one each of men's singles, women's singles and mixed.

Group winners then progressed to a final, same format.

So Andy would get either 3 or 4 matches of both singles and doubles play so some good early acclimitisation and certainly in Andreev and Kohlschreiber decent single's opponents.

Ranking points do not apply for the Hopman Cup.

The 4th opponents will be the winners of:

Kazakhstan: Yaroslava Shvedova and Andrey Golubev

Thailand: Tamarine Tanasugarn and Danai Udomchoke

Chinese Taipei: Su-Wei Hsieh and Yen-Hsun Lu

India: Poojashree Venkatesha and Vishnu Vardhan

Korea: Kun-Hee Kim and Yong-Kyu Lim

China: Hu Yueyue and Li Ming

I wonder if Adidas are partly behind the GB entry into the Hopman Cup?

It will probably come down to the mixed doubles.

philwrig wrote:

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It will probably come down to the mixed doubles.

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 Very probably in GB's case 

i.e. Andy to hopefully win his matches, and I am afraid Laura to probably lose hers.

Thanks for that philwrig.  Yes, based on the rest of the article I wouldn't necessarily take The Daily Mail word for it that Laura was ever near Malaysia this month. Strikes me as unlikely.

Malaysia, Mauritius ?  -  just 2 foreign places beginning with M that probably arent recommended holiday destinations in the Daily Mail travel section  -  they're not like us !  

Don't know if Laura is sure she is getting a qualifying WC given they seem so sure that she will be trying to qualify.

However, the article undoubtably does contain much nonsense and some factual errors :

1)  Laura is "the British teenager expected to emulate his ( Andy's ) rise to the top of the game"  hmm, no pressure, Laura, or is this the Daily Mail already setting her up for possible failure against the expectations of err folk like the Daily Mail.  You just know that typical Daily Mail headline is waiting to be produced some day in the future despairing about where it all went wrong.  Bring back the seventies and Virginia Wade and Sue Barker !

2)  I have my doubts as to whether Andy really said :  "I look forward to playing against Laura and I'm hoping this trip will be good preparation for the Australian Open"  -   Laura's a great talent but maybe Andy might like to push himself a bit more ?    ( edit :  OK, I initially missed the word "trip" which did make it sound worse, so this one not actually as bad as I thought  )

3)  "first-round casualty on three of his four appearances at Melbourne Park"  -  err, simply wrong  -  actually 2 first round exits and 2 last 16 appearances.

4)  Never mind, they have unearthed startling information from Florida about "a programme combining track sessions of 200m, 400m and 800m sprints."  Sprinting 400m is pretty impressive, but 800m, I'm in awe  

5)  Might as well end with some spurious pernicketiness given I wouldn't expect detail to be their strongest point :  "after winning six tournaments, ( I'm guessing they mean in 2009, if they mean ever they've slightly underchanged him ), he reached No 2 before falling back to No 4."   Well presuming they do mean in 2009, he won 5 tournaments before he reached no 2 and the 6th after he fell back to no 4.

6)  Ah, actually to be more pernickety ( or correct  ), I've just noticed that the article has mixed up Groups A and B in the Hopman Cup,  GB's group is actually Group B and Australia are actually in Group A,  i.e. as in the first post of this thread, and this article I have actually decided is a mess.

So, unsurprisingly I'd be more trusting of philwrig about where Laura has been training and probably anything else remotely tennis related as against whoever has cobbled together this Daily Mail piece.

Good to get decent sized tennis articles from one of the main tabloids.  Such a pity it's so slapdash and careless.

Oh, they've a place after the article for submitting comments.  It's a bit late now, but another day will dawn  

-- Edited by indiana on Sunday 27th of December 2009 03:25:23 AM