Good stuff all around. Well done Mr Golding. And if Mr Bambridge does have, as some on this board have suggested, a difficulty with confidence, then beating his higher-ranked and older GB teammate should be quite helpful. Can't recall him making a final before (though I don't follow as closely as many here) ... so making one here can't hurt either!

Great to wake up and see the propsect of an all GB final. Congrats to both Luke and Oli for their wins today, and in fairness, congrats to Liam too on another solid week.

So an Oli win tomorrow sees him back in the Top 500 and a Luke win would seem him storm into the GB Top 25 table. I have no doubt that both milestones will be achieved over the next few weeks anyway, if they are all off to Qatar as suggested. And as I said earlier in the thread, I wonder if Luke is now regretting not staying on another week here, particularly given the relatviely weak line-up. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

With regard to the Luke confidence thing, I believe that this is LESS of a factor when playing someone like Liam. Whilst playing against a training partner isn't easy for other reasons (friendship etc), what it does do is bring a familiarity to the situation and remove the element of the "unknown". So I actually think Luke would have more self belief playing Liam, than playing someone perhaps ranked lower, but that he has never come across before.

But either way, let's hope this week is a real confidence boost for him and he can start believing what we already know - that he has the talent to do really well in this sport.

Coup Droit wrote:

---

He's also been subject to some nasty abuse from some guy who presumably bet, and lost, on his singles match (should have read the tweets !!! duh . . .) which Marcus dealt with very well - bravo to him and good luck for the dubs too.

---

 This is not the first time a player has been abused after a defeat to someone who lost money.  I could sympathize with most people that lost a bet I guess but when I hear that resort to abusing the player.........then I kind of find their loss of money funny.  Is there something wrong with me?

Shhh wrote:

---

Coup Droit wrote:

---

He's also been subject to some nasty abuse from some guy who presumably bet, and lost, on his singles match (should have read the tweets !!! duh . . .) which Marcus dealt with very well - bravo to him and good luck for the dubs too.

---

 This is not the first time a player has been abused after a defeat to someone who lost money.  I could sympathize with most people that lost a bet I guess but when I hear that resort to abusing the player.........then I kind of find their loss of money funny.  Is there something wrong with me?

---

No sympathy at all from me.  If you are a betting man, you have to accept that you are going to win some, lose some and more often than not, lose more than you win. To me, if this person bet on Marcus, he clearly hadn't done his homework, because with Marcus' knee issue, he was 2nd favourite in my book.  And as has been stated here, it is not as if Marcus was secretive about the problem.

Someone probably just looked at the rankings and thought this was a "shoe-in" victory.

SF: (1) Lewis Burton & Marcus Willis CR 727 (357+370)(*) vs (3) Andreas Mies & Oscar Otter (GER/GER) CR 1088 (559+529)

(*)  Lewis & Marcus no longer the Jumbo Jets since this week's rankings were released, but still Boeing, Boeing, Boeing...

Spectator wrote:

---

Messrs Bambridge and Golding evidently broken, as the first set is now 2-3 with their opponents serving. Can't be helping them that they have both played singles matches, while their opponents haven't played at all today.

---

Can't be doing them too much harm either as they come back to take the first set 6-4