Tennis Blog: The Dragon’s Eye at Queen’s Club – Behind the Scenes

Published on: 14 Jun, 2013
Updated on: 14 Jun, 2013

The Guildford Dragon has a local pair of eyes at this year’s Queen’s Club tournament courtesy of James Avery, Chartered Physiotherapist and Partner at Bevan Wilson Physiotherapy. James reports on the fortunes of the British players towards the end of the week…

James Avery – blogging from Queen’s – in front of the press board.

by James Avery

Thursday at Queens saw mixed fortunes for Britain’s players. Dan Evan’s excellent run to the third round was quashed by Juan Martin Del Potro who was just too powerful for the brummie.

Dan will now head to Wimbledon quallies and try to make it to the main draw to join those Brits who were handed wild cards.

Andy Murray had a good day at the office having been frustrated by the rain on Wednesday. Firstly he completed his match against Nicolas Mahut, winning the second set and the match in a tie-break and then the second match against Australian Marinko Matosevic in a brisk 56mins.

The press room

After the frustration of Wednesday with its frequent rain delays, Thursday was rather more successful with in the region of 16 matches completed, getting the tournament back on schedule. It took an early start of 11am to make the most of the improved weather and the treatment room was buzzing with activity right from the start until victorious doubles pairing Marray and Fleming, ATP Physio Clay Sniteman and I didn’t getto leave until 9.45pm

The tournament and treatment room has been great fun this year despite the absence of the now-retired Andy Roddick who could always be relied upon for a tale or two. This has however been more than made up for by several other players with Marinko Matosevic probably taking the award for most hilarious comments!

The doubles players are always good fun, secure in their own wisdom after years on the tour and more than happy to rib each other over their performances. This is probably more obvious this year as several senior players such as Nestor and Lindstedt have formed new partnerships, which despite their past successes haven’t yet proved particularly successful!

Andy’s team have also been on good form every day and yesterday in particular they seemed very relaxed as we shared some tear-jerkingly hilarious stories and watched some comical You Tube videos… it’s not all hard work!

James at Queens

So what else do the players get up to when they are not training, being treated or on court? Queen’s Club has an excellent players lounge with fantastic food and the players keep entertained with games machines, table tennis, TVs and this year there is a traditional Turkish Barber shop which is helping to raise money for The Royal Marsden as part of Ross Hutchins http://www.royalmarsden.org/rally-against-cancer which is due to happen on Sunday after the final (hopefully the weather forecast will improve).