DAVIS CUP Sept 2011

Big well done to team GB for a whitewash. Must have been awesome to have been there! Seems like the team as a whole gets on great and gels really well! Can only do them all good

Not sure if a link has been posted already, but Tennis Scotland have only just tweeted it, so I assume not - for anyone who missed it on TV or wants to relive it (their poor ears *duck*), Muzz getting piped in to Flower of Scotland - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUx8Zal7DRE&feature=youtu.be

I thought it was an imaginative touch for dead rubber day, though I don't know what the HUNs thought (probably found it amusing - they seemed a very friendly bunch, they must have been to have pushed the Eurosport bus!), and the crowd seemed to really appreciate it.

According to hfwardhouse, the huns were quite unpleasant on the train back to Aberdeen...

Madeline wrote:It's Lukacs who is ranked 484 at present. Gyorgy's career high was 480 - he is Attila's elder brother, and has only played 4 Futures tournaments this year. I think they said he had had a lot of injury problems and no longer plays seriously.

Darn good level he has if that is right. Really speedy about the court.

Yes, that's right - journos were tweeting the wrong info too, so much so that I began to doubt what I had tweeted myself about his ranking! It's pretty clear that one of them had got it wrong and the rest had assumed it was correct, or more likely the person preparing the press info for the tie got confused after Kellner pulled out. (the journos get all the info prepared for them ... you didn't think they checked their facts, did you? )

cazza99 wrote: @5livetennis 5livetennis

First set to half-paced Murray 7-6 (3). No back feeling for a while, but walking very slowly and just going through the motions

@NeilHarmanTimes Neil Harman

AM wins first set on a tie-break, but his face is a bit like James Ward's on Friday, ashen and sickly looking. Not exactly too happy

Obviously Andy being tired post-USO was a big factor, but I do wonder if the conditions in the arena exacerbated the problems Andy and James had - it was too hot and very muggy, even from a spectator's point of view. I noticed Colin seemed to be feeling quite uncomfortable in the 5th rubber too at times.

Other than that (and the arene being out in the middle of nowhere with only bus links into the city centre), I thought it was a great weekend - I found all the locals (arena staff, shop staff, restaurant staff, the guy I asked where the bus to the centre went from, etc) very friendly and helpful.

The crowd were giving decent support to all the players and really raising the roof for Andy. Perhaps not quite the noise of the Birmingham ties a few years back, but there were a lot more people in the crowd in those days and those ties tended to be a lot more in the balance which always gets the noise level up.

I was always impressed with how many people stayed for the Flembo match on Sunday instead of just rushing off after Andy had finished - we were well rewarded for doing so too, it was a really good match to watch and with the right result too.

Good post Steven. Was Neil Harman there? Somebody said on Saturday they thought they saw him. It was incredibly hot in the arena. We as spectators felt it so it was terrible for the players. We could see that. Talking to Alistair, security guard at the players entrance on Saturday morning he told me that earlier in the week when they started practising they were cold. They asked for the heating to be turned up. He thought that probably they hadn't adjusted it to take into consideration build-up and thousand of bodies in there during the matches. I felt so sorry for them all. When watching recording Frew said he'd never seen ice towels before at an indoor tournament.

supergran wrote:Good post Steven. Was Neil Harman there? Somebody said on Saturday they thought they saw him. It was incredibly hot in the arena. We as spectators felt it so it was terrible for the players. We could see that. Talking to Alistair, security guard at the players entrance on Saturday morning he told me that earlier in the week when they started practising they were cold. They asked for the heating to be turned up. He thought that probably they hadn't adjusted it to take into consideration build-up and thousand of bodies in there during the matches. I felt so sorry for them all. When watching recording Frew said he'd never seen ice towels before at an indoor tournament.

Yes, Neil was there, tweeting throughout, though I got the impression that the journos were some distance from courtside so whether they would have noticed the conditions to the same extent we did, I'm not sure - even if it was hot up there too, they might have put it down to them being so high up and hot air rising, or assumed it was all their equipment generating excess heat, or maybe press centres tend to have separate air conditioning controls simply because there is so much equipment generating heat in there.

I think the security guard you talked to probably got the explanation right - though not taking into account the build-up of heat and the effect of thousands of fans in there would be a pretty basic error that you wouldn't expect a place like that to make, and you'd have thought that even if they got it wrong for day 1, the captains would have complained and it would have been corrected by day 3 - which it wasn't, because it was still too hot for Colin's singles match on Sunday.

Didnt get to see any of the tennis over the weekend as was busy celebrating my birthday but so glad they won! Well done boys