Wednesday, November 14
Last updated at 12:40 am EDT
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Mailbag: Players beware - Jon Wertheim, SI.com
It may be time for Gilbert for move further down the alphabet when selecting his next player, because it appears that all the A’s grew tired of his personality. At one point this year when asked about Gilbert’s frequent chattering, Murray said, “sometimes I just tune him out.”
Coaching is a two-phase business. The first phase is The Download. This is the period when a coach imparts what wisdom he has about execution, strategy, fitness, priorities and career-management. The hourglass appears on the player's screen immediately, and the Download goes on for six months, eight months, a year, but seldom much longer. In phase 2, the coach and player attempt to build a solid emotional relationship; if they connect, the relationship flourishes (or becomes habitual, sometimes to the detriment of both player and coach). If phase 2 is successful, it takes a lot more than the ebb and flow of a player's results to destroy the partnership.It seems that Gilbert and Murray failed at Phase 2, which is the less important phase: Murray has The Download, and he's not going to forget any useful part of it.
...I don't know what's next in store for Brad, but I have this theory: When Nick Bollettieri eventually retires from the academy, Brad Gilbert will take it over. It will be the perfect job for him, too. You heard it here first.
Here's the quote (shortened slightly and touched up with bold), which came after Federer was asked if he was bothered by missing so many breakpoint chances in the match (he converted 4 out of 10, right on his season average of 40%, which is good for 31st place on the tour; David Ferrer leads the tour with 49%):"I'm more a guy who's not going to rip every return, you know, like Agassi did on breakpoints…. I don't have the best record when it comes [to] making the breakpoints when I have them. But I create [for] myself many, many opportunities, so eventually I'll break through and I'll break their will as well. And I believe in that play. I don't need to necessarily get the first breakpoint…. I'm more of a grinder in this respect."
U>Wires
"There's no point in drafting Marat to play the Americans. He only began training again this week after an extended break," Tarpishchev told Reuters."But you can always change a player even just before the draw, so there's is still a small chance that he would be in the team if someone's injured or is not in top form. Marat might go to Portland anyway. He could be our secret weapon there."
Looking ahead to his clash with Federer, Roddick said: "There's no reason for me to be nervous. I can go out there and let it fly, play aggressive and try to knock him out.""I'm sure I'll have about seven other guys cheering for me to do that," added a beaming Roddick.
Tennis legend Boris Becker begins a three-day visit to Bahrain today.The
AUSTRALIAN PRESS
There will be no free rides for Philippoussis, but Tennis Australia will at least open up its training facilities for him. The courts, balls and hitting partners at TA's complex at Melbourne Park have been put at Philippoussis' disposal. Another fallen star, Jelena Dokic, is already there using them as she tries to resurrect her career.But Australian Open tournament director Craig Tiley said the Victorian will have to compete in the wild-card play-off tournament on December 4.
KOOYONG, one of Australia's most prestigious tennis clubs, has unveiled plans for a multi-million dollar facelift.
BRITISH PRESS
Rumours of cracks in Murray’s relationship with Gilbert began to surface before the US Open in August, but the fissures became more obvious when the British No 1 invited Leon Smith – who coached him in his formative years and is at present head of boys’ under16 coaching at the LTA – to the Madrid Masters Series event last month. Jamie, his brother, Judy, his mother, and Carlos Mier, his best friend, were also in attendance, indicating that Murray wanted more people around him to help to defuse the tensions that were mounting....Gilbert is an all-consuming man and is thought to have reacted negatively to the presence of more people than he deemed necessary surrounding the player he refers to as “junior”. Gilbert likes to work one-on-one with his charges, as he did with Andre Agas-si and Andy Roddick, and took exception to his influence being reduced.
Murray, who is currently on holiday having narrowly failed to qualify for the season-ending Masters event in Shanghai, had recently indicated that he was becoming uncomfortable with a single-coach set up. "I'm the sort of guy who likes a lot of people around me," he said at the St Petersburg tournament a fortnight ago. "Sometimes when it's just one-on-one with the coach, it can get quite stressful and a little bit stale. When I do spend a lot of time with just one person, I get a little bit - not down - but I get a little bit stale. I'll learn from that for next year and make sure that I've got three or four people around me for certain tournaments and when I have four or five weeks away in a row, to have - just for a couple of weeks - friends and family around, because it will definitely help my mindset."
It was no surprise that Federer beat Davydenko in his second round-robin match - he now has an 11-0 record over the Russian. But the manner in which the Swiss won was slightly alarming.Federer, who lost his opening match to Fernando Gonzalez, was nervous at the start against Davydenko, tentative in the middle and even though he took a 5-1 lead in the second set, he was less than secure at the end.
Andy Murray is to assemble a team of experts to advise him during the 2008 season after announcing yesterday that he had split from his coach, Brad Gilbert. His agent, Patricio Apey, said the Scot would take advice from a number of coaching and fitness advisers rather than tie himself to travelling with one person week in and week out.["]...The personnel in Team Murray are likely to change throughout the season to ensure that he gets the best tactical advice for the different surfaces and technical expertise on specific areas of his game. Apey also said there might be a supervisory role for a "mentor, someone who has been there and done it all before".
...The LTA may negotiate to keep him on in a much-reduced coaching role, although the American might prefer to have his contract bought out so that he can consign his brush with British tennis to history. He refused to comment last night, saying: "I am not doing any interviews."
Andy Murray had a lot of time on his hands after injuring his wrist on the Hamburg clay last May, putting him out for nearly four months and causing him to miss the French Open and Wimbledon. It now transpires that it was during this period that he concluded that his one-to-one relationship with the US coach Brad Gilbert had to come to an end after not much more than a year....After his remarkable late surge of form during the indoor season, when he narrowly missed out on qualifying for this week's end-of-season Tennis Masters Cup here, he laid out his preparation plans for next year. "These next six or seven weeks are going to be a really important time for me. I'm going to train as hard as I can, make sure I've got the right team of people around me and then see what happens in Australia, because I feel like I've got a good chance of playing well there."
Rafael Nadal suggested earlier this week that this is the most difficult tournament of the year, which engendered a few disbelieving looks. But the truth is that all the players are tired, and none of them want to let themselves down against their fellow top players. "Here you lose and you play another top 10 guy," said Federer. "This was a top-four guy so it doesn't get any easier."
While it would be misleading to suggest that Federer's example shows that top players hardly need coaches – the case of Fernando Gonzalez, whose game and fortunes were transformed by his appointment of Larry Stefanki last year, could be used to argue the exact opposite – their role varies enormously from player to player.
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