And that's not even all of them. It's Murray (J) and John Peers v Junaid and Nieminen in R1 (at least if I read the draw correctly), and TCH and DI against the Ratiwatana brothers.
Isn't it lovely to have gone from a world in which we were lucky to see one Briton in a given ATP doubles tournament to a world in which there are six!
Whoops! You're quite right, Spectator. Dunno how I got that so wrong (I even double-checked the list of names - or thought I had...! ), except perhaps that I was getting carried away by the sight of so many Brits in the draw & successfully overlooked the elder Murray! Think I'd better edit my opening post right away...
-- Edited by Stircrazy on Saturday 2nd of February 2013 06:46:50 PM
And that's not even all of them. It's Murray (J) and John Peers v Junaid and Nieminen in R1 (at least if I read the draw correctly), and TCH and DI against the Ratiwatana brothers.
Isn't it lovely to have gone from a world in which we were lucky to see one Briton in a given ATP doubles tournament to a world in which there are six!
As a fellow doubles enthusiast, I can well understand getting carried away! It's quite amazing to see the level of success at present. Have you seen the Wawrinka/Chiudinelli v Rosol/Berdych match, by the way? Six hours and counting ....
Quite amazing, no? Can't exactly see Berdych turning up at Montpellier after all this. Especially if he then tries to play tomorrow.
If anyone reading this missed it (and reads German), there's a blow by blow from the Basler Zeitung at http://bazonline.ch/sport/tennis/WawrinkaChiudinelli-verlieren-historisches-Doppel/story/29928984. Sure there will be lots of other stories, too. The Swiss saved 12 match points before succumbing on Chiudinelli's double fault after 7 hours and 2 minutes.
It's great to see. But I would trade in much of that doubles success and high rankings for much more singles success and some half decent rankings backup to Andy.
But hey we can rely on the LTA to continue to throw money at doubles players as against some promising singles players, who may gawd forbid be over age 21,
But of course the LTA feel that they have to keep flinging resources there to keep up the overall top 100 statistics no matter how relatively **** we may be at singles.
Please excuse my lack of enthusiasm compared to some of you guys and real questioning as to where the LTA is concentrating its resources.
But hey we can rely on the LTA to continue to throw money at doubles players as against some promising singles players, who may gawd forbid be over age 21,
But of course the LTA feel that they have to keep flinging resources there to keep up the overall top 100 statistics no matter how relatively **** we may be at singles.
It's perfectly logical. Fling loads of money and resources at something that nobody much cares about, and *Hey Presto!* you have instant success on the world stage.
(And, er ... isn't that what we did in the Olympics with Cycling, Rowing, Sailing and Horsey-crap?)
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"Where Ratty leads - the rest soon follow" (Professor Henry Brubaker - The Institute of Studies)