Hello, Jonathan Marray has not played since April 2014 and I cannot find any information as to why this is! I assume he is injured? Any info on when he will be playing again please?
There was an article in a Sheffield paper about him being injured (calf), but hoped to start on court practice and be fit for a new partnership with Julien Knowles in the grass court season. I guess the on court practice didn't go as planned.....
Hope he will be ok for the Rally for Bally and Wimbledon.
Thanks for your reply babybean, yes it appears the calf is the problem again. His choice of potential partners continues to perplexe me! He nearly won a 250 with Hanley and has not partnered him since! Knowle is ok but surely he can do better than someone in the twilight of their career?
Thanks for your reply babybean, yes it appears the calf is the problem again. His choice of potential partners continues to perplexe me! He nearly won a 250 with Hanley and has not partnered him since! Knowle is ok but surely he can do better than someone in the twilight of their career?
The problem is that Hanley's ranking wasn't good enough to get them into the events they wanted to play, even Wimbledon would be touch and go. Knowle is ranked 42 compared to Hanley at 82. It is also obvious that Jonny isn't the most attractive partner out there and most of the top guys take the view that his Wimbledon title was just one of those freak events.
It would be nice to see him partnered with a "top guy"/higher ranked player to see what he can achieve. Swapping partners every 5 minutes can't help your game surely?!
I like Jonny ( it's rather difficult not to ) and he clearly is an extremely good doubles player, but I think a bit short of the absolute best.
He did partner Colin Fleming for basically a whole season, and while their results weren't bad ( they still held relatively good rankings positions ), it did, even after a while, still seem a bit short of what Fleming / Hutchins were, and there were quite a few disappointments.
Now, some pairs are just more meant for each other and Fleming / Hutchins have gelled over a long period. But it was interesting.
Yes, I do hope he can establish a good, long term partnership.
I wonder how much of Mr Marray's struggles to find a partner come about because of his diffidence (which is, for the record, one of the reasons why he is one of my favourite players). He's very easily underestimated. Yes, his results with Mr Fleming weren't stellar - but they weren't bad either, especially given the fact that both had injuries in the course of the year. He's also had good runs with a number of lesser partners. I, too, would love to see him paired with someone really good in a long-term partnership.
He did partner Colin Fleming for basically a whole season, and while their results weren't bad ( they still held relatively good rankings positions ), it did, even after a while, still seem a bit short of what Fleming / Hutchins were, and there were quite a few disappointments.
Ross Hutchins said something during the Davis Cup tie against Italy which probably explained why the Fleming / Marray partnership didn't quite click. He said something like "Colin likes to play with a partner who is better than him or is a big personality, he likes to feed off the energy of his partner".
That's interesting. It does seem that a partnership is often who you click with rather than just a good combined ranking combination. (Just like he clicked with Mr Nielsen in fact!)
Yes, I assumed the Hanley thing was a ranking problem but Marray needs to look at things medium term even if that means playing smaller events with someone like Hanley to build both their rankings up, exactly as Ken Skupski has done with his brother Neil and it is just starting to pay off for them. Playing with people like Knowle is short termism, Marray doesn't have a plan and I find that frustrating. I thought after Wimbledon 2012 some of the top players would be falling over themselves to partner him, I was obviously wrong!
Thank you everybody for your comments so far, all of you have made good points. He needs to sort out a long term partner, who if they gel initially he can stick with.
