Conversation with Mike Raphael

Sheddie · administrator

Conversation with Mike Raphael

imoen · Admin: Moderator+Tennis Legend

Thanks UBF, really interesting read...how on earth did you get to have a conversation with Mike Raphael though?

Do you have contacts with everyone even remotely involved in British tennis: players coaches, trainers, bank managers? It certainly seems so

-- Edited by imoen at 22:56, 2006-10-17

Bladetiger · Pro player

That's great, a really interesting insight!

Sheddie · administrator

imoen wrote:

Thanks UBF, really interesting read...how on earth did you get to have a conversation with Mike Raphael though?

Do you have contacts with everyone even remotely involved in British tennis: players coaches, trainers, bank managers? It certainly seems so

-- Edited by imoen at 22:56, 2006-10-17

Lol Bethan, I assure you that I don't have that many contacts.

I do www.alexbogdanovic.com with Count Zero as you probably guessed

Mike really likes the site and it's also really useful for him and Alex in terms of sponsors, we're going to have a chat about putting more on the sponsorship page.

There is more to come, either later tonight or tomorrow morning

Sheddie · administrator

Mike's views on the Bogdanovic v Lopez match are now up on http://www.alexbogdanovic.com

He says that the courts in Kolding are really strange, you don't really know what the ball is going to do. The balls in general keep pretty low, slice is just dying on the court and topspin doesn't really do anything. It suits players who get to the net a lot. Mike was very surprised that Marray lost in qualifying as he felt that the surface really suited his game style. His match against Bastl turned on a dodgy call in the first set. Mike said "Jonny was in control in the early stages of the match and had several break points on the Bastl serve early in the first set. On one of the break points, Jonny hit a forehand winner which he thought hit the line and I thought it hit the line but the umpire called it long and it threw Jonny."

With the courts, you need to try and take control of the point very early on otherwise you get stuck 5 feet behind the baseline, your opponent's going to be coming to the net and you're going to end up having to try to make passing shots off very low balls which is difficult. He said that it'll take 2 matches to properly get used to them and be able to know for sure how the ball's going to behave.

Alex's schedule is as we thought: Nottingham, Aachen, Bratislava, Ukraine and Shrewsbury. However, he's entered the qualies for the Paris masters series in the same week as Aachen and he's hoping that he might make the cut. If he does he'll play there but Mike thinks it's unlikely as it's going to be around 105 so they'll probably going to be going to Germany that week.

Aswell as Macca and Boggo, Mike also coaches Kasiri. He says that Miles has been kept out for virtually all of this due to injuries, by the end of 2007 he's hoping to get his ranking to somewhere between 400 and 500 which is a good base to work from.

I've also got some really interesting news about Mike's plans for Alex, Alan and Miles next year. I'm saving that until Alex is out of Kolding, then I'll post it here and on alexbogdanovic.com, it will make a good "between challengers article".

Sheddie · administrator

Mike also said that when he first arrived in Kolding, he thought that the courts would give the big servers a real advantage but that hasn't been the case as a lot of them have been going for too much with the serves and haven't been making a high percentage and are getting stuck in the baseline rallies. That was the case with Karanusic v Sluiter. Karanusic is a massive server but he didn't make many as he was going for so much.

The courts are so different to those in Mons where the ball really came through at quite a nice height.

goldenboy · Club Coach

interesting stuff, ubf. so is mike quite friendly with brad gilbert, with boggo, mac king and kasiri going to train with him in dec?

Sheddie · administrator

Mike doesn't know Gilbert. Alex, Alan and Miles are going to be based permanently in the States from December, at Saddlebrooks academy in Florida. It just happens that the academy is 45min from where Gilbert and Andy Murray will be, so they're going to look to link up 2 or 3 days a week in the off season.

-- Edited by UltimateBoggoFan at 14:06, 2006-10-18

Count Zero · Tennis legend

do we know how this will be funded? out of those 3 alex is the only one whose earnings could possiblty sustain this? maybe the lat are paying or the academy has given them scholarships. i know bolliteri gives out scohlarships to good players and make its money from rich american families paying through the nose sending their less talented kids to play there :)

i think this is a good decison tho, i was i florida last decmeber and it was easily warm enough to be playing outside, and of course the lvl of general competion there i would imagine is much better.