I've been a tennis fan for many years now and predicted that Henman would never ever reach a grandslam final and I was right. I also predicted back in 93 that Richard Krajicek would win wimbledon and he did in 96.
I will probably get a lot of abuse for saying this on a Pro Murray forum, but my honest opinion is that he like Henman will simply never win Wimbledon or any other Grandslam for that matter. I admit his best chance is at Wimbledon but he simply isn't good enough. Last year and this year Murray did fairly well at Wimbledon but would he have had such success in the years when players like Rafter, Ivansevic, Korda, Sampras were around? I doubt it very much! The standard of Tennis over the last two years is bloody awful on the Men's side and now you'll find players who were ranked outside the top 75, now in the top 20. Gone are all those great players and this has left a number of fresh faces like Nadal to come in and get good ranking points and great chances to win titles. It's going to be a while I think before men's tennis sorts itself out because at the moment there's only about 3 or 4 really good players and a big divide between them and the rest. Federer is a great player i dont doubt it but he is no Sampras! I've seen both play and I can tell you watching Sampras was poetry in motion. Not only that when he was playing the competition was so much greater but he still won through! He had to deal with the likes of Becker, Agassi at his best, hewitt (also at his prime), Pioline, Krajicek, Kafelnikov,and so many more!
before yesterday's match where Murray played Baghdatis, the odds for the latter beating Murray in 3 straight sets were 7 to 1. I put a bet of £20 and won £140 so really happy about that!!! I knew the guy would win...the stats were there and he has a much better all around game. As for Murray, i do feel a bit sorry for him...sure he did well but he's sure to become like Henman soon in that he wont bother doing well in any other grandslam except at Wimbledon. And will wind down for the rest of the year and get so excited next June when it comes around. Didn't like Murray's angry arguing yesterday..reminded me too much of henman. (Henman of course took it further by hitting a ball girl and getting suspended in the doubles a few years ago)
Sue Barker was annoying yesterday trying hard to make excuses for murray. Does this woman not have anything better to do than to sit and contemplate how to make excuses? why is it that whenever Murray and Henman loose excuses are always made for them? Can't expect much from Barker tho as altho she did play, she doesn't know alot about the current game and she does her best to try and look younger. Comes across as rather sickening.
Whatever people say about Murray having potential I just dont see it at all. And i'd be willing to bet my entire house and car that he will never make a grandslam semi final.
You are of course entitled to your opinion, but I don't think you will find many on here who will agree with you.
The bit about Andy being only interested in Wimbledon is absolute nonsense. His interest lies much more in the American hard courts. His tournament win, you will remember, was in San Jose, and he has said several times that he thinks he will get his best slam results at the US Open. The vast majority on this board feel that Andy has tremendous potential, and with maturity will only get better. He has an instinctive feel for the game which cannot be taught, the problems he has can be ironed out with time and a good coach.
I have followed tennis and particularly British tennis for over 50 years, and Andy is the only newcomer who has made me sit up and take notice since Tim Henman. Whether he will eventually do as well as or better than Tim remains to be seen, but I do feel he has more of a fighting spirit.
I can't agree about Sampras and Federer either. I have as I say followed tennis for a very long time, and found Sampras' tennis boring to the point where I stopped watching his matches. Federer, on the other hand, I could watch for hours on end. Now there is poetry in motion. . .
Great to find a well argued piece like yours here, even if we're probably not all going to agree with you. I hope you decide to hang around to see what happens to Andy through the rest of the year with us - it'll be refreshing to have an alternative point of view. Besides, I guess we'll enjoy it if Andy proves you wrong. I also guess that you'll love it if he proves you right and turns out to be a teenage flash in the pan, and ends up hovvering around the WR50 mark with an annual bit of excitement around June.
On the Fed vs Sampras issue, Federer can only play the guys he's up against and seems to be doing that well. I'm looking forward to Nadal's development: he's already showing that his game works on grass as well as clay, so Federer's years of breaking ranking points records may be nearing an end and we might be heading towards a Nadal/Federer era similar to a Connors/Borg, McEnroe/Lendl or Sampras/Agassi one.
Hi there Horizon, welcome and congratulations on your win at the betting shop! I think you will have m ore opportunities for similar wins because nearly everyone who bets on an andy Murray tennis match will bet that he is going to win which will skew the odds somewhat.
With Federer and Nadal likely to be around for the thick end of a decade, just getting to a big tournament final is going to be a tall order. I dont think we should a fixation with Wimbledon or Grand slams though, just because you don't win a slam doesn't mean your c_rap! I don't think Ljubicic or Blake will ever win a slam, but they are still extremely successul players and great to watch.
I think Andy is having a perfectly respectable first full year on tour. Many players find this first year difficult as people learn your weaknesses and exploit them ruthlessly. Andy has played some poor matches this year where he has seemed directionless and even naive, but overall he has done OK. We can tell by looking at his best performances that he does not lack raw talent, and that is the one thik a coach can't give a player! I've heard whisperings that its almost impossible to get Andy into the gym to lift some weights. At the start of Tim's career, Tim employed a fitness trainer to travel with him as well as a coach. Tim was also rather skinny, so he did what it took to put on some muscle. I think Gym work is just miserable, but Andy will need to show the requisite dedication and professionalism, and he'll reap the benefits.
Andy has a few points to defend between now and the end of the year, but has the opportunity to earn loads more, espececially on the Amercian hard courts. If he can end the year ranked around 30 and maybe 6lb heavier and in good health, that would be a great achievement and set him up nicely for the 2007 and the rest of his career
Welcome Horizon26 - Interesting views though not entirely convinced by your analysis. In 10 years' time your predictions may turn out to be correct, though the one about him never reaching a slam semi-final seems extraordinary at this point in time; of the current top 50 in the world 20 have reached one or more semi-finals of a grand slam event so far, and a fair proportion of the players who haven't, are still in the first half of their career.
Having watched a number of his matches this time last year, I thought he looked like the sort of player who would go on to win a grand slam title, though perhaps not someone who would dominate the sport as Federer, Sampras, McEnroe etc have done; I still stand by that view. The only difficulty comes in trying to figure out the time frame within which he will be competitive at that level. At the start of this year I thought he might make one semi-final this year; clearly that assessment was hopelessly inaccurate as his physical fitness and his serve are well below the required standard. But given another 3 years it seems reasonable to think that he will be fit enough to compete, and hopefully, able to hit his serve with both power and precision. After which I think your house could well be at risk.
As for this idea that Murray will only perform at Wimbledon I'm not sure where you got this idea from. I tend to believe the exact opposite: that he has a decent chance of reaching the final of each of the grand slams, at some point in his career; whether he can actually win any of them is a different matter. In the juniors he reached the semis of Roland Garros, and won the US Open. Tim Henman's game was always more suited to the grass and completely unsuited to rebound ace used at the Australian Open and the clay of Roland Garros. And yet he has reached the semis of 3 of the 4 slams though he missed his chance of getting to a final when he let Coria back into the match in Paris.
Although Murray and Henman are both british, their similarities end at about that point. Henman was not a top junior, he was a fairly late developer who then had injury trouble at the point at which he thought he would be playing his best tennis. He never seemed to believe himself to be one of the top 5 players. Why not compare Murray with other players who have won junior grand slam events and then go on to break into the top 100 at age 18/19?
At the moment I would say Andy's return and backhand are of top 10 standard, his forehand is top 50, volleys not much better, while his serve and his fitness rate outside the top 100. So he certainly needs to improve dramatically in several areas and even his strengths could do with fine-tuning; so for example, he takes on more backhands down the line with an improved success rate, learns to hit backhand crosscourt aggressively, gets more bite on the backhand slice.
As a final point, I would say if you had predicted that Murray will never win a slam because he can't serve and his fitness isn't good enough to win tough five set matches at the end of a long fortnight of tennis, I think that while a lot of us would have hoped you were wrong, we would also have feared that you might well be right.
. I also guess that you'll love it if he proves you right and turns out to be a teenage flash in the pan, and ends up hovvering around the WR50 mark with an annual bit of excitement around June.
