British Tennis in 2012

Is this already the best year for British tennis since Fred Perry and the 1930s? Can anyone nominate a better one, at least since Sue Barker winning the French Open in 1976?

Marray (and Nielsen) wins Wimbledon in doubles
Murray reaches Wimbledon final
Murray wins Olympic goal
Murray/Robson win silver in Olympic doubles
Robson beats Clijsters to reach US Open round 3

And Robson's win? The best win by a female English player since....any thoughts? I've got no idea.

I would agree with you there HB. I watched the match last night and Robson's FH is just scary. That shot at 6-5 in the second TB was out of this world.

Though the thought of Sam Smith in the fountain scares me.

You could argue 1977. Wade winning Wimbledon and Lloyd reaching the Australian Open final.

Well we thought having two Wimbledons this year would be memorable...and it was.
Any year that Murray is playing is a good year for British tennis - not due to nationality bias but due to the fact that he is the best player the UK has had since Fred Perry and each year achieves a high ranking and tournament wins.
Obviously, reaching the Wimbledon final and getting Olympic gold has made it a special year for him. Glad you mentioned the Wimbledon doubles win which got rather overshadowed by Andy's heroics but was an amazing victory when all is taken into account.
Robson's silver medal, I feel sure, inspired her to the win over Kim C. Now if she can just hang around for the next 10 or 12 years we might, just might, have by then a decent British male player emerging to follow Murray.

Henman Bill wrote:Is this already the best year for British tennis since Fred Perry and the 1930s? Can anyone nominate a better one, at least since Sue Barker winning the French Open in 1976?

Marray (and Nielsen) wins Wimbledon in doubles
Murray reaches Wimbledon final
Murray wins Olympic goal
Murray/Robson win silver in Olympic doubles
Robson beats Clijsters to reach US Open round 3

And Robson's win? The best win by a female English player since....any thoughts? I've got no idea.

Great victory for Robson. And maybe since Durie:Aus q/f, US s/f, Wim q/f and RG s/f. in the eighties. Or Croft winning an WTA event.

I think the best thing to see is our tennis players excluding Murray are starting to perform well outside of Wimbledon. In the past, the "others" between themselves secured a couple of wins at Wimbledon but either never qualified or went out first round but now they are winning matches. On the women's side at least.

I actually thought (for a minute there) that Sue Barker was our last singles slam winner. So we had 2 slam singles winners in 2 years, then none for 35 years.

I watched the Robson match but sadly my laptop battery ran out and finished it on the radio. Actually need to find some highlights somewhere.

Hm no luck on you tube, tennis TV or usopen.org.

Would like to watch from just before the missed smash to the end.

Try this

http://www.usopen.org/index.html

Click on "Match Highlights" and then "Clijsters Upset"

Cheers, not very extensive, but good to see the last two points.

And the question now is - is Robson the most talented 18 yo on WTA?

She takes an early rising ball amazingly well.

British Tennis?

You need to consider how well the GB team is doing in the Davis Cup and Fed Cups, compared to previous years and compared to standards of other nations.

Former antipodean Laura Robson beats an aging player in the second round and this is claimed to be the final proof of a GB resurgence reaching a level not seen since the 1930's.

Nore Staat wrote:British Tennis?

You need to consider how well the GB team is doing in the Davis Cup and Fed Cups, compared to previous years and compared to standards of other nations.

Former antipodean Laura Robson beats an aging player in the second round and this is claimed to be the final proof of a GB resurgence reaching a level not seen since the 1930's.

So you're saying that Laura Robson isn't actually British so she doesn't count and then you're make some stuff up about people claiming that this is 'final proof of a resurgence'?

The OP is fair enough. Is this the best year for British tennis since year dot, he then gave reasons why he thought so. Not sure why you had to bring in 'standards of other nations' - surely that's in this year's favour. Standards of other nations are much higher, so in the 'good old days' success was much easier to come by.

I didn't say Laura Robson isn't actually British.

So you don't consider the Davis and Fed Cups a good metric for the quality of "British Tennis"?

Henman Bill wrote:Is this already the best year for British tennis since Fred Perry and the 1930s? Can anyone nominate a better one, at least since Sue Barker winning the French Open in 1976?

Marray (and Nielsen) wins Wimbledon in doubles
Murray reaches Wimbledon final
Murray wins Olympic goal
Murray/Robson win silver in Olympic doubles
Robson beats Clijsters to reach US Open round 3

And Robson's win? The best win by a female English player since....any thoughts? I've got no idea.

Absolutely brilliant so far! Poor Marray, in another year he might have become a household name - a bit like some of our silver and bronze medallists (and even, some of our gold ones!)

Nore Staat wrote:I didn't say Laura Robson isn't actually British.

So you don't consider the Davis and Fed Cups a good metric for the quality of "British Tennis"?

Only amongst other things. So you don't consider grandslam performance as a good measure for the quality of 'British tennis'?

You stressed that Robson was a 'former antipodean' which clearly indicated that you felt this devalued the performance somehow when relating her win to British success.

Other girls at 18 have been winning slams (Hingis for instance) so worth keeping this in perspective.

Younger players have struggled to make a mark at a young age recently because of the shift toward the game becoming much more power oriented and also that Hingis was one of the last young players that didn't have to go through age restrictions.

Back in those days a 16 year old could play a full program.

I'm aware of these facts and there is some truth in them but I still think we should be careful not to increase our expectations of Robson too high.

Remember Melanie Oudin. A couple of great slam results at a similar age, then nothing for a couple of years.

djlovesyou wrote:

Nore Staat wrote:I didn't say Laura Robson isn't actually British.

So you don't consider the Davis and Fed Cups a good metric for the quality of "British Tennis"?

Only amongst other things. So you don't consider grandslam performance as a good measure for the quality of 'British tennis'?

You stressed that Robson was a 'former antipodean' which clearly indicated that you felt this devalued the performance somehow when relating her win to British success.

By "answering" questions with questions you demonstrate an unwillingness to enter into a debate, which is what I was attempting to do with my original comment. Henman Bill may have picked up on this with his later comments on Laura. You need to recognise a difference between one or two individuals and the collective of "British tennis".

Anyway events have moved on. Laura has just beaten Li Na. I think we can say, that for the individual Brit known as Laura Robson, she has made some kind of breakthrough at this years US Open. Laura has partly explained her improved performance through help received from Andy Murray - who has linked her up with his fitness and "movement" coach.

At this moment in time when the new rankings are released after this years US Open Heather Watson will be the new British No. 1 and Laura Robson will be the British No. 2. Laura Robson is next up against defending champion Sam Stosur. One has to make Sam Stosur favorite to win that match.

A complete aside: Something I found on another forum:

"Dr Ads

I'm not judging, but isn't it odd only 1 of the top-5 British female tennis players was born in the U.K, and not one has parents from the U.K?

Heather Watson - Guernsey (mother from Papua New Guinea)
Anne Keothavong – England (Laotian parents)
Elena Baltacha – Russia (Russian parents)
Johanna Konta – Australia (Hungarian parents)
Laura Robson – Australia (Australian parents)"

You do feel that any success they have should be devalued due to this reason though, don't you?

Baltacha is Ukraine born not Russian.. lived in UK since she was 6. Konta has lived her since 2005 but seems to have gone unnoticed.

djlovesyou wrote:You do feel that any success they have should be devalued due to this reason though, don't you?

This is an excellent example of an ad hominem, confirming what I mentioned previously. I'll agree with you; I agree that you believe that I believe that any success they have should be devalued due to the reason you have on your mind.

Nore Staat wrote:
Former antipodean Laura Robson

Explain the reasoning behind this then?

djlovesyou wrote:

Nore Staat wrote:
Former antipodean Laura Robson

Explain the reasoning behind this then?

Got to agree, it would be like me putting in an article, former SOUTH AFRICAN Kevin Pietersen has just scored a fantastic double hundred for England.

djlovesyou wrote:

Nore Staat wrote:
Former antipodean Laura Robson

Explain the reasoning behind this then?

Hmmm looks like we are heading into psychology.

So your ad hominems were caused by your reaction to two words.

The answer is they are facts.

Why should these facts be so troubling to you?

Murray is performing on the World stage and the ladies game seems to be heading in the right direction, however, the rest of men’s game is dire and no-one appears to be remotely accountable apart from, of course, the LTA announcing a ‘five year plan’ every ten or so years that falls flat on its face.

Apart from Murray, we have 7 players in the top 400:
193 Goodall
242 Baker
248 Ward
311 Boggo
337 Evans
358 Smethurst
371 Bloomfield

5 years ago we had:
91 Henman
125 Boggo
231 Baker
245 Bloomfield
301 Marray
333 Goodall
338 Mackin

I defy anyone to find any progress there; honestly, it’s enough to make one despondent

I agree that whilst this year has been the most exciting in British Tennis for many years, there's been zero progress in the men. It's notable that the three standout successful male singles players in the last 20 years are very much not the product of whatever the LTA has been doing to bring talent on, but that they have either done it their way (Henman and Murray), or been the product of a different system (Rusedski).

The progress with the women suggest that the LTA is getting something right with them that it is not with the men, which is good. Even so, the fact that none of them are born and bred Brits with British parents may be symptomatic of a lack of tennis hunger for 100% native born and bred players.

I agree with NS that from the point of view of flag-waving about "British tennis" it is less encouraging that we don't see born and bred Brits with British parents succeeding. That leads to the question, does this matter? Not hugely from my perspective of enjoying tennis primarily as an individual sport and being largely unbothered by the nationalities of players. Essentially, after my favourites I look out for British players next all other things being equal and it woudl be carmudgeonly not to accept that the relative success of the women may have a beneficial knock-on effect for later years.

At least: (i) in the wider scheme of things the UK will never become a tennis irrelevance because of Wimbledon and (ii) the LTA is primarily frittering away AELTC money, and not taxpayer's money.

On a separate matter the other thing I have noticed is that the British players that have been successful have generally come from families with a tennis history (e.g. Henmans grandmother, Murrays mother etc) - it's an extremely narrow gene pool that has been exploited. Other sports have their search for giants programmes etc - going into schools generating networks. The LTA on the other hand ...