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[teejay1]

Unless this white stuff has some anti-glare component it's going to be a nightmare for players and spectators alike, but hopefully that'll have been taken into account.

Anyway no more blue clay in Madrid because the ATP have refused to let them use it again, probably because Djokovic and Nadal said they wouldn't play there next year unless the red clay was brought back.  Andy missed it, but I suspect his reaction might have been the same given how much he hates slippery surfaces.

It was the glare from it that I thought of, apart from the idea that it sounds hideous lol.

I was glad Andy missed Madrid. To my mind that blue clay looked slippery. I shudder to think what could have happened if he'd gone over on that. I suspect, at the very least, the air would have been as blue as the clay lol.

In a way I'm glad the ATP have banned the blue clay. I'm sure, in a sense, Nadal and Djokovic reacted to it because they lost, but I do think they had a point. I'm all for innovation, but that change didn't make sense to me. The blue clay, at least to my mind and watching on TV, looked like a very untidy hard court, which probably wasn't the idea lol.

[Aileen]

In a way I'm glad the ATP have banned the blue clay. I'm sure, in a sense, Nadal and Djokovic reacted to it because they lost, but I do think they had a point.

N & D lost deliberately, of that I am convinced, because neither wanted to risk injury.  As a friend of mine said "Nadal had to work hard to lose his match".

If I remember rightly Andy did not play as he did not want to risk his back on the slippery surface.  Maybe I imagined this.

If reports were to be believed Andy wouldn't have played even if the clay had still been red because his back was really playing up by the time Madrid came along and he'd been ordered to have a rest.

[Aileen]

Deliberately?? How can you say that?
I didnt watch the matches so I don't exactly know..

Because that was how it appeared to a lot of people, not just myself.  Also the pair of them were making a big enough fuss about the courts to make that seem quite plausible.

[Aileen]

To be honest, I can't remember.

[TheMadHatter]

Didn't Nadal lose a 5-1 lead in the final set against a player he had beaten 13 times in a row or something silly (Verdasco)?

[Murray Magic]

You can vote fr Andy to win the ATP fans award.  He has just posted on his Facebook, "I need your votes ". Just voted fr obviously Andy and voted for Flembo & Hutchins in the doubles.

[Aileen]

Didn't Nadal lose a 5-1 lead in the final set against a player he had beaten 13 times in a row or something silly (Verdasco)?

It was Verdasco.  Nadal had a 5-2 lead and twice served for the match, yet was finally beaten 7-5.  He later said he had had difficulty closing the match out because "I didn't know how to do it", which seems an extraordinary statement coming from a player of Nadal's calibre.