An interesting read:

http://www.sportinglife.com/tennis/news/st...Cup_Murray.html

bet Andy will be thrilled to read that :blink: You'd think Jamie would have the good sense not to criticise his brother in public :unsure:

Thanks for the article. That's probably going to cause some friction between Andy & Jamie. Is this the same John Lloyd that was married to Chris Evert?

i love jamie murray. he's such an admirable young man. and i don't blame him for being disappointed in andy. it makes me angry when articles suggest andy pulled out through injury. as jamie said in the piece, it's preventative (ie not an injury) and he could play if he wanted to. he just doesn't want to.

"nuts to you, GB" in other words, "i want ranking points instead."

which is fair enough i suppose but not exactly heroic, is it?

i am surprised at jamie's candour though. it can't help their personal relationship.

It might not help their relationship but Andy bloody well deserves it!

Yup one and the same duchess :ok:
the Lloyds are British tennis royalty in some eyes.. namely the LTA and probably nobody else :rolleyes:

Well done Jamie for saying it.
It seems that is what everyone was thinking and knew anyway but nobody really wanted to.. I imagine Jamie feels he can say that as he is one of the closest people to Andy but isn't impervious to the Andy Murray PR hype..
Jamie is possibly the only one who could make Andy see that what he has done ain't on by publicly saying it..
I could understand him pulling out if we had players like Henman and Rusedski still going but there ain't anyone.. as much as I wouldn't want him to Jamie Baker is currently proving me right and has only just managed to escape a bagel first set from Nalby...

yeah, i still don't think andy will be very impressed. i tell you what surprised me - it's that andy didn't phone john lloyd to tell him, and also never phoned his brother :shrug: i'm not surprised jamie;'s a bit irritated....

He does have an air of arrogance about him sometimes though, doesn't fully surprise me that he would do something like that...
Maybe it is his age or maybe I am being too harsh but Andy isn't going to win anymore fans by doing this.. he seems to do a few things that keep alienating his British fans...

Maybe I am being too harsh, i remember Henman pulling out to concentrate on his ranking but at least he had done his duty so to speak and had played for many years before...

to be fair, tim had started to develop back problems when he pulled out of the Davis Cup and he knew time wasn't on his side. and he'd paid his dues and then some at that point. andy is in a different situation right at the beginning of his career.

Can't comment on how genuine Andy's reasons are as I don't know, but one issue that hasn't been raised is this. Suppose he is protecting from injury - if he played and ended up making things worse then his ranking will suffer and of course he will get slagged off for that. He's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't in that respect . There is a lot of pressure on him to achieve this year, having got top 10 then dropped down a little it is very important that he focuses on that. tAlso he had a bad start to the year with that unlucky AO first round draw against Tsonga, the star of the show, and thenlast year injuries so it hasn't beene a bed of roses. Don't forget now Tim has packed up the expectation and pressur eon Andy is HUGE. Maybe he is struggling to cope :shrug:

On Jamie's comments, very odd. You just don't say that about your brother even if ti is true - maybe they have fallen out. :shrug:

I give Andy no benefit of any doubt - simply because he should have been big enough to call John Lloyd himself in the first instance, he was probably afraid John Lloyd would try to persuade him to play.

He's playing Marseille next I understand.

to be honest, if he'd done that and just been honest about it I don't think he'd have got as much stick. I mean, Fed and Nadal very rarely play this February tie, and not many people get annoyed with them - because they announce it well ahead of time, and their captain's are aware of their decisions very early on. But Andy said he was going to play, decided he might get injured, then announced his decision on his website and left his agent to call John Lloyd. If he just said at the beginning of the year "look, i want to concentrate on my ranking right now, i'll play the ties later in the year" then it would be fine. It's this feeling that he's just not being completely upfront about it all. :shrug:

yep, exactly - it is the lateness, the way the team and the coach found out and the very fact that the whole thing has a 'couldnt give a toss about anyone else' attitude that will have lost him the respect of many - including his brother it would seem.

Well you don't know what is going on behind the scenes, I'm not saying whether there is a genuine reason ro not, cos I do not know. On this subject of not ringing Llloydy up, that is odd, I wonder if they have fallen out? :shrug:

Yes I suppose there is that, but regardless fo the way it is done the fact remains that other players don't do thier 'duty' either - Nadal is not playing DC to 'prevent' a foot injury.

Anyway I am surprised anyone is that bothered because there is no way we were going to win this tie even if Andy had played, unless there was a fluke, so I really am not at all bothered that he isn't. If he had played he'd have had to have won both matches which is tough and we'd have had to have won the doubles, and we don't have a full world class doubles team.

I actually respect Jamie Murray for saying that - coming out and saying Andy Murray has flunked another DC match.

Players pulling out of the DC left, right and centre does nothing to alleviate the image that the DC is for 'lesser' players. :shrug:

It's funny how lloyd can't say anything to criticise Andy though even though he must be really pis*ed off! If he alienates Andy and he never plays Davis cup again Britain are totally screwed! just have to go with it I'm afraid, Andy is our best player by a million miles. So in this case we have to respect his decision, we have no other option.
Plus it would be really good if we had a genuine contender at Wimbledon this year, for him to be out again would be gutting. I see both sides here, tough call.

I just think it's a joke tbh, Murray just being completely selfish towards the rest of the team, who busted a gut during this tie. I can actually understand a player like Nadal pulling out as there's such strength in depth on their team, but GB really needed Murray's participation and be basically couldnt be arsed. I know it sounds harsh, but it doesnt seem like he's had any kind of major injury and should've been there. GB probably still wouldnt have won, but they would've been given such a boost and at least a fighting chance of winning their tie.

I think jamie is right on the money with his comments. If he was really motivated about playing Davis Cup, he would've been there. I mean look at Phillipousis in the 2003 Davis Cup final, had a shot knee and still willed himself to a victory. Murray's 'injury' seemed a merely preventative measure, and i just think he's let himself and his team down.

Totally agree :ok:

I know what you mean dl, but whether or not he behaved approrpiately in the way he pulled out, I think the same respect to Murray should be applied as to Nadal - the reasons were the same, to prevent injury. The Spanish may have more players, but Nadal is still their number 1. It's nto Murray's fault we have a pile of shit to play with :lol:

Anyway moving aside slightly, we didn't have a chance of winning this tie and if Murray had attended he'd have put himself through 2 tought matches for nowt. Just another side to things. We realyl need to get soem depth, it was sad that we had Jamie and no one to match him for the doubles. :(

Sorry, that just cracked me up roflmao

It's not just Murray, i mean look at Fed who's always shirking his team, especially when they've only got one another decent singles player. I mean sometimes Fed can beincredibly blase towards Davis Cup :rolleyes:

It's just a shame noone plays DC anymore, and have really crappy reasons for not playing :shrug:

Funny but true :lol:

Yeah Federer demands some questioning because as far as I know he is generalyl injury free and as you say, there are not to many Swiss players. In the past I think they depended on Mark Rosset. Now they ahve Wawrinka I guess Vavvy as I call him has more excuse nto to play than Fed as Vav is up and coming and needs his ranking.

I agree with you , it is a shame folks are tno playing DC like in the past. Great shame. :( They have got ramkings greedy and once one does it they all follow suit. It's a vicious circle.

I mean on the grand scale of things Davis Cup is pretty Mickey Mouse, no one is that bothered about it. It's a shame but tennis is predominently an individual sport so they are bound to be selfish. Our team is absolutely shocking and we do not deserve to be in the world group, I really worry about the future of British tennis. Loads of you may knock Andy Murray but without him we are back to the Bates era. No thanks!