JonH wrote:

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Mark1968 wrote:

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Anybody who thinks Marcus Willis should be playing DC obviously didn't see his performances at Loughborough this week.
A lack of effort / intensity (as usual), most serves just been plopped in and his answer to any sort of tricky situation is to chip/lob the ball into the corner of the court where as often or not it goes long/wide. He still has limited tactical awareness and his game as well as his ranking is regressing. Only the grass court season can save his skin now.

I suppose the sycophantic Marcus brigade will never abate. You can kid yourselves, I really don't care.

Jamie and Dom are clearly not comfortable playing together, the understanding is not there and the body language poor. This could possibly be changed with them playing together more but this won't happen while Jamie is Bruno.

Please don't forget that they lost to two vastly superior tennis players on sunday, no surprise for there.

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 I think that seems a pretty good synopsis to me. The Luke Bambridge podcast on the San Francisco tournie thread sheds some light on the fact that some pairings just dont gel, doesnt mean both arent good players. he does though also say that once one of the pairing thinks or feels they are the better player in the pair, it is often the end of that pairing, whether the feeling of being better is fair or not. That is often why many top pairs dont stick around long as one feels the other is holding them back, a la Murray and Peers. I suspect in DC, Jamie also thinks he is better than Dom. Realistically, maybe Andy and Jamie is the only current genuine pairing we can put out that is a good level; even if Andy didnt feel he could play 2 singles as well, the rise of Cam (I could mention Dan but no you don't have any time for him!) maybe gives us an option to use 3 singles players in a match and use Andy to also play doubles and just the one singles in a tie...    

-- Edited by JonH on Friday 9th of February 2018 10:18:14 AM

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 Yes, going back further Jamie also dumped Butorac because he thought he was better only to see his career go into decline for a while.  Jamie was a mediocre singles player (yes I know his game was ruined by the LTA) who's successes in the first half of his career came playing with Andy, even Jelana Jankovic carried him in the 2007 mixed.  However he is a vastly improved played over the last 4/5 years.  Seems a great bloke,  but still not quite as good as he thinks he is.

I didn't see Luke's podcast but it seems to sum the workings of doubles up perfectly.

I think you've said it all really Jon, I just think that Andy feels really pressured to play three matches in a weekend and look at him now, he might not even play again.

It's a long time until the next DC tie, I don't see a straightforward answer to the doubles problem, I hope someone like Joe and maybe Luke can continue their progress to give us more options.

Coup Droit wrote:

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Talent, unfortunately (or indeed, fortunately), is not enough.

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 To quote an American Football (hand-egg?) coach:

"Effort without talent is a depressing situation... but talent without effort is a tragedy." - Mike Ditka

skibbarriz wrote:

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indiana wrote:

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I think we should ( and will be very surprised if we don't ) go with 2 specialist doubles players apart from Andy if all are available. Well two specialist doubles players in the five man team whatever. You've then still got 3 for 2 singles spots and an option re going with or without Andy in the doubles. I would expect that with a perfectly fit Andy, just more so if he is not that long back, good to play but to an extent still relatively finding his way again. The 5th man in the team just helpfully renders obsolete the old 2nd doubles specialist or 3rd singles player question. 

So probably Jamie plus another doubles player and probably Cam vs Evo, dependant on how Evo has come back and he would probably have to show a lot in a relatively short time. Would be tough to drop Cam, but I think Mr Pragmatic Smith would do it if he thought it best for the tie and how he has said that he certainly would be prepared to pick Evo on his return.

7 months to go yet though, and the proverbial water and bridge to have their time.

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This is where I take issue with some of the language and thinking that can go around. Because what is a doubles specialist?

In the broad world, a specialist can be said to be someone you have to specifically recruit and perhaps pay a premium for, so they will apply their high level and rarefied skill set.

This is not the meaning of the word in pro tennis. Here, a doubles specialist is someone whose singles is inadequate, but still wants to partake in the tour.

Jack Sock is a fantastic doubles player. But he's not a doubles specialist because he's also very good at singles. Singles players drop doubles because the tour schedule is too exhausting. This creates the room for "doubles specialists" to earn a somewhat parasitic living off the popularity of singles tennis. Their doubles rankings are misrepresentative due to being falsely inflated thanks to the number of successful singles players that consider avoiding doubles draws a scheduling and welfare necessity.    

Katie Boulter, Andy Murray, Heather Watson, Laura Robson have been put in for doubles for GB because they were considered better options than the available "doubles specialists". It's a phrase I really can't seriously if you apply the wider world definition of a specialist to it. 

We put in our two "specialists" a couple days ago in Davis cup and they flunked against two non specialists. We were up against two players whose speciality was being good at tennis, even though they don't train and compete in doubles all the time like the specialists do. In tennis doubles, the specialists aren't special. Wait wait, the very top 5-10% are I hear you say. Nope, I reckon the top 5-10% would be pushed down from where they are if all the top single players were also in the doubles draws. 

What we want when picking our Fed and DC teams is to determine who will perform best in doubles. And the "doubles specialist" moniker for a player doesn't help guide us to that. 

Anyone who watched Cam's first DC match will know how often he went into the net and his impressive volleying. And that the BBC commentators said how the official match stats were massively under reporting his points played at the net. Plus he went from massive inexperience and not having a clue on clay to looking accomplished on it, all within the same match. He'd be able to take instruction, adapt to what you need to do in doubles, and do it. Same as with plenty of other talented singles players. Including the ones that just beat us.

Cam, Kyle, Evo, Jamie, Andy.

All the doubles specialists a GB Davis Cup captain needs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Very well put Skabby, harsh but true.  Should Andy return, and not want to play three matches ( he won't, I can almost promise you ), it makes sense to go with one of the above and forget about Dom and the rest.

Despite all the BBC's pre match analsys on sunday that game was always going to be a big mismatch.

-- Edited by Mark1968 on Friday 9th of February 2018 03:39:54 PM

Find it hard to argue with Skibbarriz. If we look back many years, top singles players dominated singles and doubles and it was only really post Borg, Vilas, Lendl that started the split/focus on the different forms. McEnroe always dominated doubles and was the best player of his era really. Going back all the best doubles pairs where also good at singles, probably Hewitt (whatever his recent crimes) and McMillan where the first real doubles only specialists.

In recent history, when players like Nadal, Federer, Cilic play they tend to do well in doubles and just this weekend Cilic played for Croatia with Dodig to beat Nestor and Pospisil. For Cilic and Dodig read Andy and Jamie (in terms of broad level) and they beat two doubles specialists (Pospisil is doubles rather than singles really although he keeps trying).

Players like Herbert and Mahut I figure are still really singles players who arent quite at the level anymore (although Mahut pushed Tsonga this week as did Herbert to Gasquet), and so give doubles a good go. But Noah recognised that in hindsight and swapped in Gasquet to their pairing figuring they would still win and give him an extra singles option. In effect, that is what is being suggested above with a 5 man team of Andy, Kyle, Cam, Dan/Liam and Jamie...and maybe Leon will see it that way as well now after seeing Dom's poor efforts in Spain 

indiana wrote:

Oh, I find it much easier to argue with skibbarriz here 

If Andy is playing ( day one ) singles in a Davis Cup tie, especially now with 5 man teams, I would consider it very strange and neglectful to go with a Cam, Kyle, Evo, Jamie and Andy team. Though as I said earlier if Andy is in for doubles and doesn't play the day one singles then fair enough, doubles is then properly covered.

I take on board and agree with much of what skibbarriz says re clearly "doubles specialists" being very overranked in doubles ability when you think of all the singles players that already can play doubles better and others who no doubt could if they played it more.

I do think they are over dismissive of the top doubles players. "Singles inadequate", yes, "want to still partake in the tour", yes. But given how lucrative a living the top doubles specialists can make, why do more not go down this route? I suggest that surely a big reason is that these that do are far more capable at doubles than your average singles pro player that ultimately doesn't make it in singles. Essentially they are good at doubles, overranked as against pros doubles abilties in general yes, but still good.

And for now I would say that none of Cam, Kyle or Evo are singles players that have made any real case that they should be in a team to potentially play doubles over say Dom and probably either Skupski. One or more may in time but they haven't yet.

But for now, however one considers the expression "doubles specialist" our best ones are good enough at doubles that I consider if Andy is playing day one singles, even with the intention of playing in the doubles, there should be two of them in a GB five man team. If Andy is not in the team then to me there just has to be two doubles specialists in it given I am totally unconvinced that anyone else would do better. Someone could shock, yes, but no need to take that chance when we simply would in comparison not need 4 essentially singles players, quite unproven in doubles, in a 5 man team.

 That's a completely pointless question/argument over weather Andy plays day 1 singles.  He always plays day 1 singles because he is our best player, and always will if comes back and plays at his previous level.  So it makes most of your point irrelevant really.