Yes, I'm not trying to make a mountain out of a molehill about the Beecher/Joel exchange.

And they had walked off from the main group of people by 15 yards or so.

I don't think Colin realised quite how far his voice was carrying - it's flat and calm and quiet out there and it's easy to talk a bit louder than you imagine when you get a bit het up.

Although that doesn't change the fact that the things were said and the nasty tone was clear- pointed and personal.

But it's true, it went through my head that perhaps that's what Joel needed? A shake-up? Maybe Colin's approach was 'for the best', so to speak. Who knows?

Although that was just me trying to think about it from the other side - my gut feeling was certainly that there's a time and a place for everything and this was neither.

But Andy and others highly rate Colin and it's true that methods taken out of context are exactly that - out of context.


In fact, I probably had more of a problem with Jeremy Bates (although me 'having a problem with him' is, obviously, ridiculous and utterly irrelevant).

Standing right behind him (and Jane O'Donaghue, I think it was) during Jodie's match, the man had nothing good to say. Jodie's young, playing the second seed, and playing some excellent tennis (and some wild misses). She was quickly losing. He made some negative remark (can't remember exactly). When she fought well and got back to 5-5 and then hit one wayward shot, all he said was "now she'll throw it all away". When she lost the game and it was 5-6, he said "that's the set gone". When she proved him wrong and made it into a tie-break, nothing was said. She was then 1-2 down in the tie-break and he said "that's it, Xu's got this now". It was endless. (It's true, she lost the TB, but very tight, only 5-7 or so...)

It made no difference to the match, of course, Jodie couldn't hear him. But I was shocked/nonplussed/bemused/whatever to hear such endless negative put-downs.