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MurrayRocks
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When Andy begins his campaign here on Tuesday he will seek a first win in four matches. But to anyone who suggests there is something seriously wrong, Murray has a clear answer: "I don't care what everyone else says and what everyone else writes."

That answer sounds as if Andy is back to normal.  yay

www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/tennis/andymurray/7632665/Andy-Murray-ups-his-game-as-he-dismisses-critics-ahead-of-Rome-Masters.html
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Aileen
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^ Hate to be a bit of a pessimist, but Andy sounded upbeat before Monte Carlo, and then ...

My only hope is that he's starting to sound aggressive, and that's encouraging.  If he can put that aggression back into his tennis, he's on the way up, but Seppi's a natural on clay, so his first match will be a challenge.

Once again, I've copied your link onto the match thread.  Maybe you could do that as well in future (no harm in having the same article on differrent threads)because it''s the match thread which is where all the focus is at the moment. Smile
[ Last edit by Aileen April 26, 2010, 04:54 pm ] IP Logged
Daisy
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http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/174049/Andy-Murray-Stop-telling-me-how-to-play


“I will never change my style and the results I’ve had against the world’s top players support that. My way works.”
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Aileen
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Quote from: Daisy on May 14, 2010, 07:25 pm
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/174049/Andy-Murray-Stop-telling-me-how-to-play


“I will never change my style and the results I’ve had against the world’s top players support that. My way works.”
Think Andy has a good point.  If he tries to change his natural style it could wreck his game, but have to say I sometimes think he isn't as aggressive as he perhaps used to be - but then, that's from us armchair critics.  He's a great tactician and that's what it really boils down to.  It's that first serve that's so poor, yet every so often he comes up with an ace (10 against Ferrer last night).  If he can't improve it soon, I hope we might have TV screens, or my case computer screens, programmed to block his first serves out!  They truly have me holding my head in despair because it's something that can make the difference between winning and losing.

This quote from the article sounds like an encouraging declaration of intent though:

“My strategy is to work towards winning a Slam. There is no rush, no panic, if you put pressure on yourself then that can affect your mind.

“And panic is not what I want to do, I’m still pretty young and time is on my side, so now that I am working hard and have my confidence back we shall see what happens.”


 
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kyba
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Must have the worst serve in the world you can see as soon as he tosses the ball that its going into the net .
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MurrayRocks
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Scotland’s Andy Murray reveals to DEUCE the last time...

I got into hot water with a Twitter post I made?
Haven’t had any get me in trouble yet. But give me time… I’m sure I’ll say something wrong.

I queued for tickets?
I always queue for movie tickets. I haven’t queued for any concert tickets. I don’t go to concerts that much. I go to basketball and football games more.

I bought tennis balls or paid to hire a court?
My racquet company HEAD sends me Penn balls to practise with, but if for some reason we don’t have any we’ll buy them. Hiring a court? It’s been quite a while.

I lost something important
I can’t find things a lot. I’ve had the same wallet and phone for quite a while now. I don’ really lose things often but it’s common for me not to be able to find things for a couple of days. But they eventually turn up.



I cooked for myself?
I cooked for myself and a friend a couple of weeks ago. Although it wasn’t really cooking (laughing). Just some pasta and chicken and Dolmio Stir-in sauce.

I wasn’t requested for a press conference after a singles match?
That hasn’t happened once since I’ve been on the tour.

I missed a flight?
I’ve only ever missed one flight, and that was in Rome a few years ago – 2006, I think. I had to leave my passport with hotel reception when I first checked in and then they forgot to give it to me when I checked out. So I got to the airport and I didn’t have my passport with me. They sent it over in a taxi but I obviously didn’t know who the driver was and he couldn’t speak English. So I was just standing outside waving at all the taxi drivers and I ended up missing the flight.

I shared a hotel room with another player?
Not that long ago. I shared with Ross Hutchins in Cincinnati last year.

Being recognised helped me?
We got free dessert last night at a restaurant, which we weren’t expecting. Pancakes, ice cream, Crème brûlée  – very nice.

I visited a country  for the first time?
When I went to Shanghai in China.

I asked someone for their autograph?
Probably when I was 10 or 11 when I went to Wimbledon. I prefer photos.

I had a bad hotel experience?
I’m really not that fussy with hotels, as long as the internet is okay.

I was asked to sign something unusual?
I’m asked to sign shoes a lot. Arms. Someone in Australia asked me to sign their forehead.

I met a childhood hero?
Agassi would be the last one – a few years ago. I had the chance to go to dinner with him and practise with him. That was cool.
[ Last edit by MurrayRocks May 21, 2010, 08:24 am ] IP Logged
Aileen
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^ Thanks for this info, MurrayRocks.  Bet Andy & Co really enjoyed their yummy free dessert! Smile
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Mark
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Thanks MR, that was fun to read.
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Tasmanian Devil
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I asked someone for their autograph?
Probably when I was 10 or 11 when I went to Wimbledon. I prefer photos.

Same here.  It's a much better memento if you can manage it, I feel.
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MurrayRocks
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INSIDE VIEW ON MURRAY'S KNEE TROUBLE . 



If Andy Murray is to fulfil his lifelong ambition of winning a Grand Slam title, he will have to do more than beat the likes of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal - he will have to overcome his own body.
The star of British tennis was born with a bipartite patella - or split kneecap - and revealed after his first-round victory over Richard Gasquet at this year's French Open that the condition has been causing him pain since the age of 16.
But what exactly is a bipartite patella, why is it affecting Murray now, how should it be treated and could it prove career-threatening?
BBC Sport spoke to leading sports physician Dr Andy Franklyn-Miller for an insight into the problem afflicting the world number four.

 WHAT IS A BIPARTITE



In essence, it is a kneecap made up of two separate bones instead of one. During childhood, most kneecaps form as a single segment but occasionally - as seen with Murray - they form as two, fused together by fibrous tissue.
"A bipartite patella is very rare," said Dr Franklyn-Miller. "It occurs in about 1% of the population and often goes unnoticed because it is only when you exercise at the intensity of a top-level sportsman like Murray that you might see symptoms.
"It tends to be found incidentally - you would be X-raying for another reason, such as knee pain, and come across a bipartite patella - but the two bones have a very close join that normally settles down and doesn't cause any problems."

  WHY , WHEN , THEN , DOES MURRAY EXPERIENCE PAIN ?

Scot Murray, 23, believes he played too much tennis while he was still growing and recalled how the stress on his split kneecap became so severe that "it got to the point where I couldn't walk".
Dr Franklin-Miller explained: "It's very unusual that pain would stem from the actual join between the two pieces of bone. It's more about how the separation affects the patella tendon, which attaches the kneecap to the lower leg.
"As our thigh and lower leg bones grow in adolescence, they put enormous force on the patella tendon. If you're involved in high-level sport, these forces are even greater.
"When your thigh muscle contracts, a regular kneecap will pull the patella tendon in one direction but a bipartite patella will pull it in different directions. This abnormal loading irritates and inflames the tendon, resulting in pain."

 WHY IS HE TALKING ABOUT IT NOW ?

Murray revealed he has trouble bending beyond a certain point and that sliding is particularly unkind to his knee. So his pain may be particularly acute during the clay-court season. A gruelling five-set battle against Gasquet on the red dirt of Roland Garros may well have prompted his comments.
"At a Grand Slam tournament, you could play as many as seven five-set matches with very little rest," added Dr Franklyn-Miller. "Tennis is all about explosive movements. The longer a match, the greater the load on your knees.
"The load through the tendon is at its greatest when you come to a sudden stop. In that sense, clay should be more forgiving than hard courts because the give in the surface acts as a shock absorber.
"But then again, clay plays slower than hard courts so there's a lot more scampering into the net, stopping sharply, bending down to retrieve low balls and twisting to get back in position."

IS MURRAY'S CONDITION DEGENERATIVE ?

Not particularly. The British number one says he is experiencing the same sort of pain now as he was during his junior days at the Sanchez-Casal Academy in Barcelona.
"Murray's knee shouldn't have got any worse over the years and, provided it is managed correctly, it shouldn't do so in the years ahead," stated Dr Franklyn-Miller.
"The back of our kneecaps come into contact with the joint itself and it's possible that his bipartite patella could be roughening the cartilage, which can lead to osteoarthritis.
"But most elite athletes are susceptible to an element of osteoarthritis. Although it may affect them later in life, it is unlikely to ever cause pain during a match."

SO HIS CAREER IS NOT UNDER THREAT ?

When Murray was diagnosed with his problem at the age of 16, he was forced to rest for six months. But with care and attention he can manage it through a season and it will not determine his future in the game.
"It's certainly not career threatening," insisted Dr Franklyn-Miller. "The problem with modern-day tennis is that it's a year-round sport but Murray and his team will have a routine set out for dealing with the knee and it seems to have been pretty successful so far.
"Because a bipartite patella is formed at birth, there is no cure and there is no way of predicting exactly how the condition will develop in the future.
"But Murray will have the very latest biomechanical technology available to him. That will ensure he can monitor what's going on inside the knee and treat it accordingly."


HOW WILL MURRAY BE THREATING THE PROBLEM ?

The tried and trusted Rice principal (rest, ice, compression, elevation) continues to prevail. Murray's methods include Bikram yoga, ice baths and physio, all of which keep his injury at bay.
"There are a variety of techniques designed to settle the pain - like rest and use of a leg brace. You can also go down the surgical route to alter the pull of the thigh muscles or remove the second segment of bone but these are completely inappropriate to a top athlete like Murray," concluded Dr Franklyn-Miller.
"So he will probably manage inflammation with lots of icing, leg-strengthening exercises, stretching and perhaps things like shock-wave lithotripsy and simple injections of water. He will carefully manage training but the critical focus should be on recovery after matches."The good news for Murray and the British public, with Wimbledon coming up, is that he's fit and his strength and conditioning has improved enormously over the last five or six years, which will help to support what is a pretty unique problem in his knee."

BBC By David Ornstein .
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Aileen
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Fascinating MR.  What would MW do without you? hug   I've always been curious about this problem and how it might affect Andy's career as I knew he'd had to stop playing for 6 months in his teens because of it.  Sad that Andy should be one of the 1% of the people who have this condition.
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MurrayRocks
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Great blog !




Andy Murray is running straight toward you. He's running so fast you begin to think that, to avoid the low wall that's the only thing standing between the two of you, he might have to do a flying leap in the general direction of your skull. Murray starts sliding at the doubles sideline. He keeps sliding until he’s threatening to take your front row seat. You realize something else at this moment, now that you’re at court level, that you never realized quite so viscerally before: Andy Murray is not small. A collision would probably work out better for him than it would for you. At the last second he tries to flick a backhand down the line, but he can’t bring the ball back into the court. Murray ends his slide just in time to stand straight up and avoid falling over the wall. He looks down the court, into the stands on the other side of the net, where a group of his opponent Juan Ignacio Chela’s fans are sitting next to Murray’s entourage. It’s not clear which of these groups he’s referring to when he points his racquet in their direction and mutters, in a tone of downbeat exasperation, “Oh, shut up.”

It seems that at each Grand Slam I write about the “best court in the world to watch tennis.” I’ve claimed the title for the Grandstand at Flushing Meadows, the old Court 2 at Wimbledon, and, at the start of this week, Court Suzanne Lenglen here at Roland Garros. I guess when I find a court I like, I suddenly can’t imagine watching a match anywhere else.

But my first love, my first favorite, was the Bullring, where I saw Murray yesterday. I loved the courtside seats because they could make a match seem unforgettable even when it wasn’t a classic in the broad scheme of things. You almost certainly remember Marat Safin dropping his pants against Felix Mantilla on this court in 2004, but what are the chances you ever heard about the five-set, third-round throwdown between Albert Costa and Xavier Malisse that same year, in which Malisse, against every odd, came back from two sets to one down to win. It was incredible to me then, watching the length and quality and variety and competitiveness of their rallies, the amount of talent required and energy expended on each side, that this was really just another match among thousands, and that each player would have to forget it as soon as possible. One shot would inspire a whispered “Holy ----,” the next get would elicit a mumbled “Jesus Christ.” Afterward, it almost seemed like it had all been a waste, that these guys were too good at what they did, that the skills of the pros weren’t impressive in the ordinary sense of the word—they were bizarre. This isn’t a reaction I’ve had anywhere else.

More than most tennis courts, the Bullring feels like an arena, where athletes stage contests for the fans. We’re close enough to feel like we’re not just observing from the outside, but have broken down the barrier between actor and spectator. To the degree that it’s possible, we’ve entered the match. Nowhere else can you get a sense—as in seeing, hearing, feeling—of the force that two professional tennis players throw at each other on every point.

Maybe this is only true from the press seats, I don't know. They’re up close, along one of the baselines. You can hear the players breathe as they wait to receive serve in the ad court. You can also hear what they say under their breath, which, in Murray’s case, is virtually impossible for this American to understand. That may be a good thing.

Next up were Murray and Chela, and right away my perspectives on these guys were upended. I think of Chela as a pro and little more, a guy who does his job without a whole lot of passion or anger. I was wrong. Every lost point, every Murray winner, elicits a grimace of agitation from the Argentine. I also think of Chela as a dull and steady baseline par excellence. Also not true—by any reasonable standard, he pummels the ball. There’s an unpolished quality to his strokes, especially his serve, but that doesn’t rob them of their pop, or their powerful sound.


Murray I knew was good. But like I said, you forget how big the guy is, how physical his game is. Do you wonder sometimes when you see him on TV what he’s doing out there? He looks like he’s just flipping the ball back into the court and gliding from side to side. Not true. There's an explosive effort involved in even the easiest-looking slide along the baseline. Murray isn’t flipping the ball back; he’s fighting the ball off. His serve, which has never been noted for its blistering pace, rattles the entire net when it catches the tape.

From an emotional standpoint, you might see Murray as a whiner, a guy who’s always got some niggling complaint about something. Up close you can hear him mumble to himself, take deep breaths, get annoyed at an invisible person in the audience. Taken together, these little tics and gestures begin to seem like Murray’s method of competing, of bracing himself, bit by bit, moment by moment, for the psychological strains of a match. It’s the pep talk of a fundamentally pessimistic person, and it doesn’t look like an easy act to pull off. When Murray tells the crowd to shut up a few inches from me, it isn’t anger that I see in his face. It’s embarrassment over his missed shot, over his small failure. Every tennis match is a performance where flubbed lines are a given. But that doesn't make flubbing a shot in public any easier.

There are many more moments I could describe from the Bullring that you won’t get anywhere else. Let me finish with a tiny snapshot of one rally. Murray began it by moving Chela wide to his forehand side, so far wide that Chela had to execute a long slide into the corner of the court. You could hear the clay crunch under his feet. He got there just in time to reach out and throw up a towering lob. From my seat, it arced straight upward, toward the sky, much higher than lobs normally appear to go on TV. Finally it came down, with a solid thud, an inch from the baseline. What a shot! Murray, blinking no eye, calmly set up and drilled a perfect bounce overhead into the other corner ("Wow"). Chela slid there, clay crunching under his feet again, and buzzed a ridiculous slice crosscourt ("Jesus Christ"). Murray was on it in a flash and . . .

You get the picture, I hope. That’s tennis in the Bullring.


http://tennisworld.typepad.com/thewrap/2010/05/ringside.html
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MurrayRocks
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Love that article .... great profile piece ....


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/article7135136.ece
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Aileen
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Quote from: MurrayRocks on May 29, 2010, 04:28 pm
Love that article .... great profile piece ....


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/article7135136.ece
Glad you posted that MR.   I'd already read it in The Times Saturday Magazine and though it was very good.

Sorry, but I don't think Andy is cut out to be a male model.  A David Beckham he is not.  He doesn't look comfortable in those expensive outfits.  In fact he looks a bit like a human coat-hanger imo!

Particularly liked the bit where he said his parents spent the better part of 30,000 euros a year to send him to Barcelona, when he could have trained in England for nothing, after what happened to Jamie.

As for Kim, when Andy was asked if he was anti-English, he said (amongst other things) that "I had an English girlfriend ..."[note the past tense].

Later when he was asked if he lives on his own in his Surrey house, he replied "Yeah, I live there on my own", and when pressed about his relationship with Kim, refused to be drawn, only saying that, when they split, "[Kim] got custody of Maggie, their terrier, and he misses the dog."

Now ...... ??? Think

Also very encouraging what he has to say about wanting to win a GS, and "I would love to win Wimbledon.  Love to.  But it's an incredibly difficult thing to do."
[ Last edit by Aileen May 29, 2010, 07:33 pm ] IP Logged
MurrayRocks
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I love reading all that stuff about Andy , he's such a tender guy .... love him more and more ... wub
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