replic of ilrealnd have a few, i think 2 are hovering just outside the top 400.

if there is the event coming up in dublin would they get wc's i wonder.

i think team gb sounds bettehr than team uk

maybe thats the reason

speaking of things along those lines why didnt the commonwealth games have tennis? they had badminton and table tennis. edit and squash 

-- Edited by Count Zero at 13:32, 2006-04-07

Serbinegro take the second. I have a feeling this is going to be a longarsed match.

stagger wrote:

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Serbinegro

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Neat renaming   Serbia & Montenegro is such a mouthful !

Big apologies to stagger for not doing commentary so far, mum got on the computer and wouldn't budge. I'll do a report of events so far in a sec

They've had a couple of interviews with Andy Murray:

Andy said in a pre-recorded interview that he feels fine and could play but it's best that he plays the doubles as it's less physically demanding.

Live interview after the 1st set: Andy said that the court really suits Greg and that he thought it'd be a straight sets victory with maybe 1 tiebreak [this was before Tipsarevic upped his game]. When asked twice whether he'd play the 2nd singles rubber, he grinned both times and said "Wait and see."

Apparently Bates can switch Murray and Parmar up to an hour before the 2nd singles rubber starts.

Commentators are trying to work out which one will play as both have gone off with Colin Fleming to hit. Parmar went 10min after Murray.

Depends on the state of the tie: I suppose if Greg's match continues to look dodgy then Bates will switch to Murray for rubber 2 if Murray feels well enough.

Assessment of Tipsarevic's game style: Big hitter off both sides, you can see that he was brought up on clay courts as his technique is fantastic - he makes few unforced errors in baseline rallies. He's a big fighter, very competitive - he beat both Rochus brothers in a Davis Cup tie on clay last year in 5 sets - both matches he won from 2 sets to love down. Decent serve but his big weakness is his volleying.

In set 1: Greg's serving and all round play was fantastic. His serve was unreturnable and has so far clocked up 143 mph. I was very impressed with his baseline play and hsi returning. He looked really sharp. Meanwhile Tipsarevic was floundering, he looked really nervous and his footwork and movement was really poor. His groundstrokes were pretty ordinary, he was playing a clay-court game style, rallying with Greg and not really going for anything and in the end it was the Serb who was making the errors or Greg was outmanoeuvering him. Greg broke for 4-2 and served out the set comfortably. The surprising aspect has been how few times Greg has chip-charged.

In set 2: Greg's serving was still fantastic - both 1st and 2nd serves really unreturnable. He's getting so much spin on them, Tipsarevic just can't time his returns at all. The key games which cost Greg were Tipsarevic's first two service games. Greg had deuces on both those games and played some poor shots which enabled the Serb to scrape a hold. If Greg had broken there, he'd be 2 sets to love up right now. The arrival of the Serbian national tennis association president, sparked some life into Tipsarevic and his body language and game started to improve. It finally dawned upon him that the way to play baseline tennis on these fast indoor courts was to play attacking shots and really make a big effort to get the first strike in. Since then he's been consistently outhitting Greg on his service games even though he was making little impact on the Rusedski serve. A tiebreak was inevitable though there were warning signs in the last couple of Rusedski service games as the Serb started to read Greg's serve and sure enough come the tiebreak, he hits a massive return winner on point 2 and it was downhill from then.

We're in for a real scrap.