Not quite sure what heading this comes under but there is an interesting article from Simon Briggs in the Sunday Telegraph entitled "Meet the British coaches who are blazing a trail in women's tennis" There are 5 British coaches  with female players in Melbourne at the moment which includes Dan Smethurst as Johanna Konta's assistant coach. Most interesting is the section on Andrew Bettles and Tom Hill. Bettles is with Elina Svitolina and Hill with Maria Sakkari. Hill was dismissed by Daniele Collins after she lost in the 1st round Wimbledon in 2018 claiming he lacked experience. He then chose   to work with Sakkari which has been a successful partnership. Both Bettles and Hill seem to hsve got to the level where they have enough stature to walk into another job. Nigel Sears can no longer keep up the pace on the practice court so they send out younger hitting partners who very often becomes a doppelganger. The comment is made that frustratingly for retired female players this well-trodden path is unavailable to women. The other coach is Alex Ward with Heather Watson and Nigel Sears is coaching Annet Kontaveit. 

I hope I've got the day correct, but the Australian Open draw is being held in Craig Tiley's office at 6.00 pm AEDT on Thursday. 

the addict wrote:

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AO on twitter:-

"There will be no matches at Melbourne Park on Thursday. An update on the schedule for Friday will be announced later today. "

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 It seems that a worker from the Grand Hyatt hotel tested positive  for Covid. So 600 players and officials will have to self isolate until they return a negative test. You wonder how the US Open and French Open took place. It's hard to imagine the Olympics taking place.

JonH comes home wrote:

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In the ATP Cup event, which I guess is still the big event this week in the alphabet soup of events taking place in Melbourne, standings are:

group A - Serbia playing Germany for SF spot tomorrow - both beat Canada who are out
group B - Australia and Greece are in doubles in their match; if Greece win it will be a straight fight with Spain for top spot, if Greece lose, it will still leave all 3 teams in it
group C - Italy won both matches and are through
group D - Russia won both matches and are through

Semifinals -

Russia will play one of Serbia or Germany
Italy will play Group B winner, Spain looks most likely but any of the 3 still.

-- Edited by JonH comes home on Wednesday 3rd of February 2021 12:27:44 PM

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 So Spain won through without nadal so far and play Italy, who look good so far. berretini to watch in Australian open. 

russia face Germany in the semis , Germany beat Serbia, zverev couldnt quite beat Djokovic but they took a close doubles over a pair with Djokovic in it. 

so, Germany v Russia and Italy v Spain