korriban wrote:

---

Is it just me, but do our GB men tweet almost obsessively about xbox and playstation almost as much as about tennis? More than tennis in some cases. And this doesn't seem to be just a teenager thing either.

Completely accept that weeks away on the road can be dull, and that whenever boys get together you have to have a bit of banter and competition. Rafa and Andy are into their video games too.

But I do wonder whether the selfish, disciplined, routine-led, highly competitive egotistic life of a pro singles player is compatible with these groups of 4 or 5 GB boys playing xbox to this extent in their free time. Crowd and pack mentality could easily take over. When players from other nations start tweeting about our boys and their video games, and taking photos, I start to worry a bit.......(as has happened in Greece again)  

I keep coming back to what Tim Henman and what he said about Jiri Vesely a couple of years ago, in terms of his single minded attitude vs some of our boys. Can you imagine a Vesely or a Rafa or and Andy doing a Harlem Shuffle video with the lads, even at 18 or 19? Ever?

Probably just me.

---

 No, not just you.

korriban wrote:

---

No question about me getting old!!! Definitely yes!

I deal with social networks as part of my job, so I'm well upto speed.

I'm not really talking about twitter, FB, etc anyway - I wouldn't expect anyone of our lads to be any different to the crowd, albeit more disciplined - Kyle's a great example - seems to be in control, balanced, messages at right time, less banal (sorry to say that, but true) than many others, more tennis talk.

No, I am talking more about "on-site" Xbox-a-thons, whether that we at the NTC, UK tournaments, GB team training, foreign tournaments - fosters banter, group think, timewasting, etc. In such a selfish, individual sport simply questioning whether this is a problem.....so would we see the Germans, the Spanish, the French all doing this? I know what I think.

---

I don't know whether we'd see the French, Germans, Spanish, etc doing the same - my guess is we might if we followed some of them. All their Xbox and football chat bores the hell out of me too (and I agree that some, like Kyle, are better follows than others for tennis enthusiasts like us), but they probably think the same about all the boring tennis stuff I tweet!

Anyway, in tennis, there's bound to be lots of downtime (it's not healthy to train 12 hours a day, for a start) and while there are lots of more productive things than could be done with it (no doubt some of them do more productive things too), sometimes you just have to relax in whatever way works for you. If they enjoy each other's company (even if just by playing these games) that's surely got to be better than feeling very isolated on tour, the reason lots of young players mention for giving up.

Both positive and negative things could potentially come out of them spending lots of time together, and it may well depend on whether the more dominant personalities are the more or less conscientious ones. Hopefully their coaches are aware of what's going on and try to help them harness their friendship/rivalry as a force for good.

R1:  (1) Lewis Burton & George Morgan WR 807 defeated Andrew Carter & Stepan Khotulev (USA/RUS) UNR by 3 & 2

*****

QF:  (1) Lewis Burton & George Morgan WR 807 vs Richard Becker & Kimmer Coppejans (GER/BEL) UNR
QF:  Iván Arenas Gualda & José Checa (ESP/ESP) WR 1877 vs (3) Josh Goodall & Harry Meehan WR 1201