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It seems that the comment made by Andy Murray two years ago regarding who he would support at the football world cup in 2006 still runs deep with many English fans and even sports writers.

The now infamous comment in which he inferred he would be supporting anyone but England at the World Cup still draws negative press coverage and is still a clear bone of contention with many English people.

Even though the comment was made in jest after Tim Henman and the reporter had been mocking Andy Murray for Scotland’s failure to qualify for the World Cup. The Daily Mail, that stand-up newspaper, took some selected comments and ran them as being anti-English and also adding in the complete fabrication that he wore a Paraguay shirt. Startling is the number of people who use this as a reason to “hate” Andy Murray.

If you want the real story on that listen to Tim Henman who was at the interview

A recent news article (June 2008, so not recent if your eding this in 2010) by Brian Moore (ex English and British Lion rugby player) at the Telegraph explains this is the reason why he won’t support Andy Murray and a recent comment on this very site calls Andy Murray rather strongly a racist for his comments against the English football team.

First off clearly Brian Moore doesnt really bother to research his stories and secondly Brian Moore seems to forget, when we play football, we play as separate nations. Same goes for Rugby, Cricket and any other sport England and Scotland compete separately at.

I’ve got big news for Brian Moore – Andy Murray is not the only Scot who would support anyone but England. England is Scotland’s biggest rival in Football! Why would a Scottish football fan, support their biggest rival. It doesn’t make them anti English, it simply makes them normal. And you will not find many Scots that do it in a nasty way, it’s generally jovial and good fun, some of the Ant-Murray comments are far from jovial!

When it comes to tennis, it’s an individual sport and players compete under their home country, in Andy Murray’s case that is Great Britain (England or Scotland are not countries). There will be some British tennis snobs that will simply never accept the likes of Andy Murray. Some English fans (the genuine racists) will dislike Murray purely because he is Scottish, these few are hopefully in the Minority, but they will be fueled by idiots like Brian Moore.

Next week will see the start of the ATP tour clay court season with 3 master events and Grand Slam being crammed into a 6 week period. It will see two back to back masters event, Rome and Hamburg, played in the space of two weeks, where as last month the two back to back US hard court master events were spread over four weeks.

The clay court event congestion gets worse when you also consider that the event crammed in between master event Monte Carlo and Rome is also another important clay court event in Barcelona, which regularly attracts a high class field. Which means the clay courters on tour need to compete in 4 of their most important events in the same amount of weeks. Then to top it off after one week break, the only clay court grand slam is played.

The congestion has been caused because the ATP tour moved the two US masters events mentioned above, Miami and Indian wells to accommodate the US college basketball season.

World number 2 and 3 time French Open champion Rafael Nadal said,

It’s an outrageous way to treat European and clay-court players. The truth is the ATP is making our lives almost impossible, Moving Miami and Indian Wells back because of college basketball is something I understand because it’s very important to them but this is a world tour. We only have three Masters Series events and we have to play them with an important tournament like Barcelona all running together. I’m tired of complaining about this but the people in charge of this don’t share my opinion and I have to respect that.

The hard court players allready have the advantage of having more than 50% of all ATP events played on Hard courts and even a higher % of the big money events take place on hard courts. The 4 $1M+ tournaments that are played on tour will all be crammed in to the period between 21st April and ending with the final of French Open on 8th June. Whilst the 12 £1M+ hard court events are spread more evenly throughout the year.

 
The biggest fear of the clay court players will be if this trend continues, then the clay courts could be marginalised the same way that grass has been. There is only one major tournament currently played on grass, that being Wimbledon with a two mid tier events Halle and Queens club, which are played at the same time, meaning Grass court players only get 2 tournaments a year to play on their preferred surface. Which makes it no surprise we don’t see grass court specialists any more on the tour. No major player since Pat Rafter has made an impact with a serve and volley game.

Grass and carpet (Another surface that suits a serve volley player) are surfaces that have been used sparingly by the ATP tour in recent years. The increasing number of events played on hard courts, including this years Olympics threatens to remove variety from the game. I for one would love to see more grass court tennis and although clay is not my favorite surface I would hate to see it marginalised, which at the moment seems to be happening.

Today, in the second round of the US Open, Andy will face one of the ATPs veterans, Jonas Bjorkman, who reached the semifinals at Flushing Meadows in 1997 and is 15 years older than Andy.  They have never met in a match before.

In his first round match against 20 year old Pablo Cuevas, Andy quickly trounced the Uruguayan in straight sets.  However Bjorkman will prove to be tougher than the young qualifier.  Bjorkman has been around for a long time in the professional circuit, and has a lot of experience.  He is likely to have a pretty good game plan, and Andy will have to play well to get to round 3.

However Bjorkman isn’t too bad an opponent for Andy to have; Andy’s forehand is still not back to its good old whopping self and it’s only his fourth match back after a long time out.  But Bjorkman isn’t one of those hard baseline hitters, which means that Andy wont need to worry about getting overpowered.

Andys grumpy demeanor seems to have gone, or at least it did in his match against Cuevas.  His sessions with Roberto Forzoni, his sports psychologist, appear to have helped him enjoy tennis more, and have brought out a positive and refreshed Andy Murray.

I’m sure Brad Gilbert has thought up a good strategy for this match against Bjorkman, but I think Andy’s back on form now anyway…

“I was a good player who worked hard, gave everything I had to my profession and I don’t think you could ask for more than that.”

British tennis star Tim Henman has announced that he will retire next month, his last match being at the Davis Cup tie with Croatia. 

“I want to take a step back from the tennis world.”

After 14 years playing professionally, the 32 year old former British number 1 has admitted his injuries have been getting the better of him.  Until 2 summers ago Tim was still in the worlds top 10, but for the first time in 12 years he will drop out of the top 100 if he loses his match with Dmitry Tursunov in his US Open first round match.  Speaking abot his injuries he said:

“The way that it’s affected my performance has obviously made my life a little bit harder and probably a little bit less enjoyable…  It’s absolutely the right time for me.  I have no doubts whatsoever.  It’s not necessarily the end, but I’d like to think it’s a new beginning.”

Two things have been key in his decision to retire.  Firstly, he has had a painful back condition for a few years now, and when he started playing on the hard courts again last month in Washington the pain was too much and aided his decision to stop.  He has decided that he would like to spend more time with his family, and the fact that his lovely wife, Lucy, is expecting their third child next month pretty much finalised his decision to retire sooner rather than later.

“I will miss the competition the most.”

So after the US Open, his final Grand Slam, Henman will play his final match at the All England Club in next month’s Davis Cup tie, much as his former rival Greg Rusedski did earlier this year.  Throughout his career, Tim has won 10 ATP Tour titles.  However his dream of winning a major grand slam tournament, especially Wimbledon, has always eluded him and he has suffered defeats in six grand slam semi-finals.  He admitted he originally wanted to play one more Wimbledon next year but changed his mind because of health issues with his knee and bad back.

“I played some of my best tennis at Wimbledon and that’s something I’ll always be proud of. My record was good there but it was always a goal of mine to win the tournament. Am I disappointed I didn’t win it? Yes I am. But when I reflect on my career, I was always able to maximize my potential. This was as good as I could have been.”

When asked if he was do it all over again, would he do anything differently Tim replied:

“Yeah, of course, against Goran.”

For those who dont know, in 2001 Tim came within two points of becoming the first British man to reach the Wimbledon final since Bunny Austin in 1938.  However he ended up losing a five-set marathon game to eventual champion Goran Ivanisevic in a match that was played over three days because of rain.

It seems likely that Tim will concentrate on his property empire, and perhaps even a coaching or mentoring role with the LTA.  He has been doing that informally for quite a while though, particularly with the Andy and Jamie Murray, who have both benefited from Tims support.  With both Tim and Greg Rusedskis retiring, men’s British tennis must now move on to a new era in which rising star Andy Murray is expected to dominate.

“Hopefully the pieces have been put in place for the next generation and Andy, fingers crossed, will play a big part in that.”

Andy flew into New York yesterday after spending some time with the lovely Kim and training at the National Tennis Centre in Roehampton.