Sam Smith, who commentated on the women's matches at Roland Garros, was a breath of fresh air after the idiocies and Fedworship of Wade and Croft. Her commentary was balanced, fair and well-informed - a great pity we dont see more of her.
Indeed, I was also interested in what she had to say about Andy after he'd lost to Ferrer. Jim Courier was constructive as well.
The discussion, obviously, went to Andy's prospect of winning majors. Sam made a point that I must say I'd never thought about, but it made sense. She said that Andy's development as a player is probably a couple of years behind that of Federer, Nadal and Djokovic because, relatively speaking, he took the game up properly later than they did.
It did make me think, because although he was hitting balls from around three, wasn't he about seven or something, perhaps a bit older, before he played more? I know there was some chance of him going in to football (glad he didn't personally) as well. Then there was being in Dunblane, hardly the tennis capital of the world, before going to Spain.
I just thought it was interesting to hear people like Sam and Jim comfirming what a lot of us think, that the best could very well still be yet to come from Andy. Now there is an exciting thought!
Sam also talked about Andy's back problem. I really appreciated the way she mentioned one thing that no one else did at the time, i.e. that the way we deal with pain is different from one person to another, and maybe Andy has a low pain threshold compared to some of the other players. I liked it because she clearly understood the one thing that some of the other commentators forget, that all the players are just people in the end.
