Thanks, Madeline :) I confess, I have been lurking for a while, it's great to get such uptodate info on all the British players, I come here for all the latest scores!
I read you went to the Sunderland future, right? I went last year! It was lots of fun! I was doing some work for the British Tennis mag and the LTA web site, so it was my first time there, but I enjoyed it a lot. The atmosphere was so nice and relaxed! Would have liked to have gone this year, but I'm studying in Spain, will get there again next year!
Thanks for the welcome, Sally I sent a couple of emails asking if they had anyone to cover the tournament for them (British Tennis) and they said they did, but passed my request on to the LTA who said I could send in daily summaries including player interviews for them to go on the web site. Then British Tennis emailed and asked if I would like to interview Matt Smith for their feature interview that month - which of course I was thrilled to do as I want to be a tennis journalist! Everyone at the tournament was so great, it was great fun!
Kate, let me know when next you will go to Sunderland, we could meet up. I feel very lonely there as everybody else seems to be attached to one of the players!
Oops, we seem to have strayed well off topic. It is nice to see that Andy and James Auckland have teamed up for the doubles, I wonder why Andy turned James down when they were down under?
Maybe because it was such a big tournament he didn't want to commit to anything other than the singles - but obviously his singles campaign was over fairly quickly, so maybe his plans changed....
I am going to be very interested to see how Johnny Mc. does here. I think he will struggle, 47 is just too old, and we should remember that towards the end of his career he was starting to be underpowered. He didn't getting the additional power from new carbon fibre rackets that everyone else was getting. He does have a very good partner in Jonas Bjorkman though, it would be great to see them win a couple of rounds.