Spectator wrote:

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What a day. What a lovely day, spent at least in part (when not working) reading story after story finally giving credit to Mr Murray. (Steven, if you read this, thanks for your tweets of various stories ... and if you have time, take a look at Le Monde, which has a fantastic article/set of photos, as does the New York Times, on the triumph of British sport overall this summer. Made me think of you, with all your Olympic, as well as tennis, experience!)

I don't follow tennis as much as many of you (though I've followed Murray ever since I wondered who this unknown team was that was beating Erlich and Ram in the Davis Cup ... and then through this website learned more about and began to follow GB's various men and women players). And I don't know as much as ... well pretty well any of you on this board. But it's been really lovely to share the amazing British Tennis accomplishments of this summer -- from Watson, Murray and Marray at Wimbledon to Murray and Robson at the Olympics to Robson, Konta, Broady, Edmund and Murray at the US Open -- with such a knowledgeable, witty and kind group of people, and to know when the fifth set ended this morning at 2:00 am that there were lots of other people equally (or more) excited. Even if the excitement is much wider now than it used to be ... the person with whom I share an office arrived this morning grinning from ear to ear and an elderly neighbour, when I said I'd had a long night, said "For the obvious reasons, I assume!" ... the board members who have been following players at all ranks and with a genuine respect for their talents and personality are the people with whom one can best rejoice. Thank you!

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Thanks for the heads up re. the le Monde article (which is excellent - btw, a couple of the comments below it from disgruntled GEMs are so wrong, but hilarious ) and the NYT, even if their (damning with faint praise) 'worthy Paralympics' set my teeth on edge a bit - maybe if the Americans had actually been able to watch any of it, they might have 'got it' a bit more!

I'm also glad that at least one person didn't get too fed up with me tweeting links to press articles - I was trying to limit myself because there was so much out there! LOL

Great comments about the board too - I'm pretty sure it is hard to find an internet forum with a better ratio of decent people to trolls on it, and that makes even the more heated debates more fun. I must add though that I think of you as a regular and certainly not someone who 'doesn't know much'

Being able to share following the Final and the aftermath with other committed tennis fans here and on Twitter has made the experience so much more fun than it might otherwise have been. Madeline remembering when we first followed Muzz's late night wins in the US at the Challengers and Indiana remembering when people here used spreadsheets to work out when Andy would hit various ranking milestones along the way definitely made me smile! It goes to the heart of why it is far more fun to follow players long before the whole world jumps on the bandwagon, even if many of those followed in this way don't make it right to the top, and why following them with other crazy tennis fans makes it even better.

I was able to get the Final on German Eurosport (which is free-to-air if you can point the satellite the right way) but ended up watching most of it on the computer (combining the bet365 stream with the commentary on 5Live), so that it was easier to be on Twitter and follow the comments on the board as well.

Jonathan Overend, in particular, did a fantastic job on Monday night, and while Jeff Tarango was as irritating as ever (albeit amazing at calling the challenges the right way!), John Lloyd did a brilliant job of putting Andy's performance into context too -I'm sure there will be a few of you on here who never thought you'd see me combining the words "John Lloyd" and "brilliant" but credit where it's due in this case - he even managed to survive the awkward moment when Tarango thought he was still the DC captain! LOL They looped the final set once an hour from 7 pm onwards on 5LX yesterday evening, and I must admit I listened to it again (albeit in the background) 3 or 4 times.

> an elderly neighbour, when I said I'd had a long night, said "For the obvious reasons, I assume!"

Just to lower the tone a bit, this would have made me laugh even more if it had been said the morning after you had watched with Shazza-Vika women's semi with the volume turned up a bit too loud

I hope that the British public do acknowledge what Andy has done, Olympic gold and a Grand Slam are not to be sniffed at. He's had such bad press from our media, it's about time he got a break whether he cares about it or not!

Mikeduke wrote:

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Helen40 wrote:

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I hope that the British public do acknowledge what Andy has done, Olympic gold and a Grand Slam are not to be sniffed at. He's had such bad press from our media, it's about time he got a break whether he cares about it or not!

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Where do you think he gets bad press? I haven't seen any bad press about Andy for a good few years, perhaps sometimes I don't agree with the report but I don't think you could call it bad press. There have been loads of features in the papers about his win.

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I think his bad press comes from general columnists as opposed to the sporting press who largely seem to respect him.

Just seeing Steven mention challenges. Muzza was certainly the US Open challenge king, well for number challenged anyway  

47 was 19 more than anyone else ( Tipsy ), and it has to be said getting 10 right is quite a good effort for him, although there were a late couple of successful "you've just got to challenge them " which helped.

RJA wrote:

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The successful challenge for the ace at 15-0 in the final game was worth a hundred failed challenges.

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Yes, thankfully he had a challenge left in that final game.

I think "sometimes" dour scot is quite kind about Andy   

Quite good to see his round of interviews.  The more he is seen on TV away from an immediate tennis environment the more folk see an other side to him.