Quote from Andy from the Barcelona tournament website. I note that it includes Andy's old traditional quote of "I'm not expecting to win", which strangely I feel quite encouraged by.
WHAT THE PLAYERS SAID Murray: On David Ferrer next: "I just have to try and play a bit better. I'm not going to have too much time to practice before I play against Ferrer, but after this tournament I'm going to practice as hard as I can before my next tournament. Hopefully I'll start to play better and better the more matches I play because I played well in some matches last year but consistently I've not been that great on clay. I just need to train a bit more. He's ranked 10 or 11 this week so it's obviously going to be tough. Clay is probably his best surface so I'm not expecting to win but as long as I perform a bit better than I did today and my game is getting better and better with each match, then it's not such a big deal about the outcome as long as I've felt I've improved."
On hiring a new coach: "It's not my No.1 priority at the moment. I want to play matches on clay and make sure I'm getting better. I think I'm still goign to go to Estoril regardless and then I'll see. Hopefully I'll play well this week and gain a bit of confidence from having won some matches."
Those are very encouraging comments from Andy. It shows that he is correctly priorotising his future development and not being too short termist in his approach. I was a tad concerned that his split with Petchey might have partly been down to his frustration with some of his results this year but it seems that he is still thinking clearly about his future.
Michael wrote: 5:45 they go head to head tommorrow. Perfect timing for me as i get in from school at 5:40.
Is it? the OOP has it down as Not before 4:45 PM (local time).
So I make that not before 3.45 our time - should get in at around about 4.45 on a tuesday so hopefully murray has wrapped up the first set by then (if it has started)
Those are very encouraging comments from Andy. It shows that he is correctly priorotising his future development and not being too short termist in his approach. I was a tad concerned that his split with Petchey might have partly been down to his frustration with some of his results this year but it seems that he is still thinking clearly about his future.
Agreed! Sounds like he was more frustrated that his whole game was going backwards, and he was losing matches playing badly rather than that he was losing matches per se. I got the impression that they were maybe trying to change too much about his game too quickly while he was also getting used to being on the main tour, particularly all the travelling when playing so many events. So the whole thing was "too much".
Hope I can make it here at 3.45pm to follow the match. Would love Andy to find some better form!
I'm really excited about this match! We have coverage on TVE2 at 5pm, so hopefully they will show Andy, especially as he is playing Ferrer. I really hope they do and that they don't do a recap or something *lol*. Vamos Andy!
Fantastic news, would you be able to give updates on the match kate ?
I've gone for Andy in 3 - have been watching a bit of Murray v Hewitt and am feeling very patriotic, lol !!!
Hopefully I won't be brought back down to earth this afternoon. I reckon Andy's got a decent chance, I saw Ferrer once and I wasn't particularly blown away - he's a Davydenko type player who's just ground his way to the top - extremely mentally strong and no real weaknesses in his game.