Junior Davis Cup Finals, San Luis Potosi, Mexico (Week 39)

philwrig · Hall of fame

RE: Junior Davis Cup Finals, San Luis Potosi, Mexico (Week 39)

Spectator · All-time great

Given the statements by Edmund and Quinzi, it is clear that to become a top-ranked junior tennis player, you must first have dubious culinary tastes. There you go, Ratty -- how's that for cause and effect?

Jesting aside, congratulations to the team on a truly stellar win.

-- Edited by Spectator on Monday 3rd of October 2011 04:35:42 PM

steven · Tennis legend

Excellent interview with the Ruser in the Fail today = http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/tennis/article-2044709/LTA-Greg-Rusedski-exclusive-I-mean-business.html

I think he's going to make a brilliant DC captain post-Murray when the young ones are making up the mainstay of the team.

I like his nice gentle dig at Tim too, along the lines of stop sniping from the outside, get involved instead.

philwrig · Hall of fame

Greg I believe is turning out to be a great role model for the youngsters. Not the most gifted of players himself, but maximised every ounce of his talent through sheer hard work and determination.

DavidC · Tennis legend

Shhh wrote:
Have the last 2 to 3 years of British tennis been the worst that there will be for the foreseeable future?

The crop of 15-18 year olds seem very promising, they won't all make it of course but surely our "top 10" players of 2015-20 will be ranked a lot higher than those of 2010?????

I think the key word there is 'crop'. In the past 20 years junior talents have mainly been isolated individuals. On top of that I would argue that our top 1993-95s have achieved more than any other selection of 6 from the last 20 years if we take out Andy Murray, who was always on a 'superstar' track (for instance at the age of our Davis Cup winning squad he had already won a Futures event and was close to 500 in the ATP rankings - the trio have yet to win a match at that level).

Hence if you look at James Baily, Jamie Delgado, Martin Lee, Jamie Baker, Alex Bogdanovic and Dan Evans (you could argue the case for others to be in the top 6, but it wouldn't change the overall comparison) then I would say that their junior achievments have been eclipsed in total by George, Oli, Liam, Kyle, Luke and Evan. On top of that these 6 share an age spread of less than 2 years.

So I'm confident that the days of looking for the British number 2 somewhere in the 3 figure bracket should be over in the next 5 years.