Gobsmacked 

I'm with Madeleine here. Forget have your mates and your Mum around get a coach, you're better than this Andy....

steven wrote:

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Bogo (US) it is - WR 118.

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Madeline wrote

Career high 97, now aged 27. I will be devastated if Andy does not beat him

philwrig wrote:

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He won't, I'd put the mortgage on it.

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 Wasn't sure if you were predicting a loss or a win here Phil

Armchair wrote:

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I'm with Madeleine here. Forget have your mates and your Mum around get a coach, you're better than this Andy....

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Not looking likely on the evidence of OEM's article in today's Times:

Murray takes friendly option in bid for glory

Andy Murray is ready to hand more of the responsibility for his development into a potential grand-slam champion to someone whose career highlights were a best ranking of N° 727 and a handful of Davis Cup ties for his native Venezuela.

It was Daniel "Dani" Vallverdu's fortune to have been training at the same Sánchez-Casal Academy in Barcelona when Murray arrived there to work his socks off in his mid-teens.

The pair struck up a friendship that has endured to the extent that Vallverdu, 25, is going to be spending a lot more time on the road with the world N° 5.  Murray does not actually say that the South American will be his coach, but, as the Scot prepared for the Sony Ericsson Open, which started this week in Key Biscayne, Florida - in which he plays Alex Bogomolov Jr, an American qualifier, in his first match today - it was clear that Vallverdu is the first man he will turn to.

"It's more important to have a constant figure who is there all the time," Murray said yesterday.  "I don't necessarily want someone with me for 40 weeks a year.  But when I go to the tournaments, Dani is going to be there a lot of the time, so I'll have someone there that's done all the training and been there [with me] every week.

It won't be like one week, then two weeks when I don't see anyone, then another week chopping and changing.  From Canada [in August] to the end of last year, the only tournament Dani didn't come to was Valencia.  At the start of the year he was in Australia and the I didn't see him for five weeks and that might have been a mistake on my part.  It's important to have a bit more continuity because otherwise, the dynamic changes quite a lot."

[...]

I give up!  When is the boy going to see sense?        With all due respect, it's beginning to look to me as though he's talking out of a certain part of his anatomy & is thus doomed never to win a Grand Slam.  A couple of weeks or so ago (it may have been earlier or later, i.e. after his abject capitulation to Donald Young in Indian Wells, but I can't be sure, as I'm unable at the moment to lay my hands on the edition in question! ), OEM did another article, with a cri de coeur of a headline (can't remember that, either!  ), which discussed possible candidates for the post of Andy's next coach.  OEM even reported that Tony Roche had made an approach to the Murray "camp" because he thought he had something to offer, but the so & so's reportedly didn't even do him the courtesy of acknowledging it!

Other names mentioned (& they've been touted before) were Bob Brett, Darren Cahill & Roger Rasheed.  IMHO, on the evidence so far this year, a lesser individual like Dani Vallverdu ain't gonna succeed where potential coaches with far better credentials (& maybe far stronger characters! ) aren't even given a chance!

By "proper coach" I was not thinking best pal Vellverdu !!!        

But I guess he more just needs a hitting partner because Andy's got everything else all sussed out himself, yeah