AEGON Championships Review

Well it's been a week and a half. It really has. I bombed down to London last Saturday to watch Andy's semi at Queens v Juan Carlos Ferrero (JC to his mates) and found a very different look to the venue.

I was so used to the red and white branding that Stella Artois covered the place in, that I did a bit of a double take when I walked down from the tube station and found it had all turned blue, new sponsor (AEGON), new look.

But that wasn't the only thing that had changed, the player area had been relocated to one of the indoor courts which was good and bad. Good because it wasn't upstairs and a massive trek around the balcony to the back of the indoor courts, but bad because it was a days camel ride to the loos.

The concierge in the player lounge is a Scot called Fraser and he's been doing the job for 4 years. He is awesome and can find you anything, anytime. I thought I'd test his skills when I broke a nail on Sunday morning packing boxes for Andy's house move. So when we got on site, I challenged him to find an emery board. "Give me 2 minutes" he said and 2 minutes later he produced a Betty Barclay emery board. No idea where he got it and he wasn't for sharing! Did he raid the lady members locker room?

Another new addition to the player lounge this year was the ATP Tour vicar. I don't think he's actually employed by the ATP but he turns up at certain events apparently and offers spiritual guidance to any players who need it.

There's always the odd celeb hovering in the player bit. On Saturday I saw Rodney Marsh - yes someone had to tell me who he was - and in case you don't know either he's an ex England footballer and TV pundit.

Best thing about the player restaurant in my opinion, is the never ending supply of strawberries and cream, plus chocolate mousse to die for. Andys' team are far more interested in the Krispy Kreme donuts which appear daily at 4pm on the dot. Every day they took an entire tray to the massage room and scoffed the lot.

Sunday was a special day a great atmosphere, packed centre court and beautiful sunshine. The perfect day to pick up a first grass court trophy. The trophy itself was massive and incredibly heavy. Thank goodness Andy didn't get to take it home. He'd have been looking for sponsorship from Silvo :).

Went for dinner at an indian restaurant called Vama on the Kings Road. There was 12 of us and it was a lovely way to celebrate. So often you don't get the chance to enjoy a victory because you are rushing to catch a flight to the next event! There was a lot of kormas and tikka masalas at our table - they are a bunch of lightweights when it comes to curry.

The funniest part of the evening was Treacle (Andys' fitness trainer) arguing with his girlfriend over what kind of dog they should get. He wanted a Bulldog and was going to name it Lucifer. She wanted a Bijon Frise to call Fifi. A Bijon Frise looks like a snowball with legs and is definitely a girlie dog so they were poles apart, from the way the argument was going, I don't fancy Treacles chances!

Monday to Wednesday I was running a camp for girls born in 1999 at the NTC inbetween helping with the house removal which was chaos and I slept well Wednesday night! Several of the girls were heading off to the Smirkva Bowl in Croatia the following week so we did a lot of work on sliding and clay court tactics. We also used the yellow ball and practiced playing some matches that were a pro set (first to 9 games) which is the format in Croatia. 

Most of our 1999s have been playing competitively with the green ball and matches that are first to 4 game sets so it was quite different. There seems to be a real shortage of competitive girls in this year of birth so it's good to bring them together for training and match practice. There were a couple of very tearful kids after losing matches which staggered me considering it's a training camp where practice matches are designed to allow them to experiment with shot selection and tactical patterns.

Kids have to understand it's OK to miss and it's OK to lose at this young age. I didn't even ask them the scores when they finished but as we live in a results/outcome based rating and ranking system from a very young age, it's easy to see how they (and often the parents) attach so much importance to winning.

I headed home Thursday after a lunch with Jamie at his flat and Friday I was up at 6 to get ready for a morning at Dunblane Primary School. Unfortunately it was raining a bit and the playground puddled so we had to set up in the gym which was the size of a badminton court.

We ran through 4 classes of P2 and P3 kids - 120 in all and only 8 had played tennis before. Katherine Brown who won Miss Scotland last month came to help, complete with crown, and she was looking gorgeous in her GAME, SET, MURRAY T-shirt (available from www.andymurray.com/shop).  We also had some cardboard cut outs of Andy which Head UK had provided. Great fun (if exhausting) and all the kids went home with an autographed pic of Andy and a Fred Perry sweatband! BBC TV and radio came as well as local press so lots of coverage for tennis with Wimbledon round the corner.

Saturday - Open Day at Dunblane Tennis Club from 10 to 1, it almost killed me! There was a huge turn out and I spent 3 hours playing mini tennis with hundreds of kids of all shapes and sizes (well it seemed like hundreds).

There were loads of under 8s, many of whom hadn't played before and it just reinforced to me how important it is to have someone to play with you (or throw balls to you) at that age so that there's enough repetition to allow kids to progress.  Parents are vital at this age and stage because kids can easily become frustrated if they can't hit the ball to each other. When that happens there's a very good chance they'll go off to find a sport that they can have more success at!  If I do this type of session again, I'm roping the parents in too!

Back to London Saturday night and a lazy day washing and ironing on Sunday before the circus begins Monday! I'm doing some commentating for 5 live again - just a match a day, wouldn't want to overdo it!  :)

That's it for now folks!