Sports Round up

10. FABIO CAPELLO (down):

Not content with blaming the WAGs for England's 44 years of hurt, killjoy Capello now believes New Order, Frank Skinner and the bass player from Blur have held key roles in the conspiracy. Yes, there will be no World Cup song because "we want to be fully focused on football". Never again will we see John Barnes rapping or Mooro and the boys fiddling with their dickie bows and nervously averting their eyes from Pan's People. We believe this England side should express themselves by recording an album of Leonard Cohen covers. The game's gone.

9. SKIERS (down):

Inevitably that they should be going downhill really, the British ski team heads off to the Winter Olympics next month with their national federation on the verge of collapse. Cue doubts about funding and jobs and whether they will even be allowed to compete.

Wayne Rooney's metatarsals have better timing.

8. DAVID ATTOUB (down and out):

The Stade Francais prop has been given a 70-week ban for gouging. Club president Max Guazzini blamed an "anti-French bias" and pointed out Springbok Schalk Burger got eight weeks for the same offence, which admittedly is better than a poke in the eye. Attoub, a man possessing the look of an outtake from The Sopranos, has previous. Gouging is abhorrent, even in a sport that is based upon cheating. It is not sure what he will do during his absence, but he is said to have his finger in several pies.

7. ANDREW STRAUSS (down):

Funny old game cricket. With a face made for widescreen TV, the England skipper was previously the toast of the nation, steering Ashes heroes to the cusp of a Test series triumph over nasty South Africans and being in the shake-up for BBC Sports Personality of the Year. Then he oversees a water bed resistance and decides he does not much fancy taking on Bangladesh.Sports Watch notes that even Captain Bligh turned up.

6. OWEN COYLE (down):

One of the first rules of sport is to whinge when you're winning. Anything else comes across as sour grapes. Hence, while Coyle was right to damn the ever-irritating William Gallas for his "assault" on Mark Davies, he should have kept his counsel, even had the Frenchman stuck the midfielder in his boot, driven to the docks and fed him to the fishes, while The Shangri-Las sang Remember (Walking in The Sand), a la Goodfellas, to the backdrop of a crimson sunset. Of course, should Kevin Davies maim someone next week, the moral outrage will be replaced by Wenger-esque myopia.

5. TIGER WOODS (non-mover):

Reports surfaced this week that the world's greatest golfer had checked into a clinic specialising in sex addiction. You should never judge a book by its cover or a bloke by his undercover activity, and the critics can no longer see Woods for the trysts. A fallen hero perhaps, but the only man able to make golf watchable. As for sex addiction clinics, that sounds like an expensive way to give medical credibility to an inability to keep one's pants on.

The case continues.

4. RAFAEL BENITEZ (up):

We love Rafa here. Says the Spurs game is make or break. Says he can guarantee the top four. That American chap says he is one of the top five managers in the world. People laughed at that one, but when you start compiling names he would certainly make many a top ten. The conundrum is this: is it managerial greatness to see off Spurs with such a modest team or is it managerial ineptitude that means you have such a modest team in the first place? Whatever, Liverpool will finish fourth. Largely because Spurs are not very good either and Villa can let in four at home to Blackburn.

3. EOIN MORGAN (new entry):

It is IPL auction time, that bizarre mix of Bollywood and Bargain Hunt. Morgan was the only English (Irish) cricketer to be picked in the auction for a whopping fee of £135,000.

And the beauty of the IPL is he will hardly have to play for his money as the likes of Jacques Kallis and Kevin Pietersen are in the line-up ahead of him. The best money-spinner this side of suing Portsmouth for your image rights.

2. JAMES MILNER (up):

Regular readers here will know we bow to no man or woman in our appreciation of helium-based tattoo king David Beckham, but we are warming to Milner. Like Beckham he is devoid of pace, but he is refreshingly direct, does the simple things well and plays with a rare degree of common sense. Fundamental to Villa's rise and knocking on the door for South Africa.

1. GARY NEVILLE & CARLOS TEVEZ (new entry):

Obscene gesture? Neville raised a finger. Come on, this is the sanitising of football run amok and ignores the sheer fun of the spat between the former colleagues. We particularly like Tevez's description of Neville as a "moron", although "boot-licker" was pithy too, and feel players should be encouraged to express their feelings with such candid colour. Neville, never one to be confused with Charlie Cairoli, is now turning into the angriest of old men, like an anaemic Hulk with middle-age spread. Expect the sparks and Ovaltine to fly in the second leg next week.

Source: The Times

Rory McIlroy's major mission

During television coverage of the first round in Abu Dhabi on Thursday the commentators briefly discussed how the new regulations on square grooves would impact on the elite players. Generating spin out of the rough will be far more difficult now and all of them will have to adjust to this loss of control. It was mentioned in passing, though, that Rory McIlory would be less put out than all of the other top players because he’s only been a professional for a little over two years. He can’t have been using square grooves for long.

Watching from Bangor Golf Club, McIlroy’s coach Michael Bannon couldn’t help a smile. McIlroy has been spinning the golf ball with square grooves on his irons since he was nine years old. Square grooves are what the pros used. They could see no reason to use anything else.

As a new season dawns manipulating the ball out of the rough will be the least of McIlroy’s worries. The greatest challenge will be to ignore the altitude he has already reached and keep climbing. It is a truism in golf commentary to say that he will reach the summit of the game but what he faces now is the stiffest and most treacherous part of the climb.

He started last year with the goal of reaching the world’s top 10, being a tournament winner and a contender at the majors. By the end of the season he had ticked all those boxes but had done so in a way that suggested he could have done more while he was at it. It would be unfair to say that about any other 20-year-old finding his feet in the professional game but McIlroy’s talent and his temperament are so extraordinary that normal criteria are suspended. His desire to be the best is freighted with those conditionsIn crude terms, he needs to convert more of his winning opportunities and he needs to be a better putter. When he won so early last year — January — it was reasonable to expect that he would do so again and that failure coloured his reflections on the season too.

“Yeah, he would have been disappointed with that,” says Bannon. “If he had won another one it would have been OK. It’s about learning how to get over the line. He needs to convert more of his top fives into wins. That’s what will take him to the next level.”

It wasn’t that he folded on the last day. Far from it. On his three major appearances in the States he posted his best round of the week on Sunday. On the regular tour there were three occasions when he had a winning chance going into the final round, improved his position on the last day and still didn’t win. And not all of his top fives were missed opportunities either: two of them came when he trailed by nine shots after three rounds. But it is easy to identify three events where he was in a stalking position on the final day and couldn’t hunt down his prey.

After such a terrific year his putting numbers were telling. He finished second on the money list in Europe with an average of 30 putts a round which ranked him at 111th in the putting statistics. It suggests a parallel with Sergio Garcia that McIlroy desperately needs to knock on the head. Like McIlroy, Garcia came out on tour as a teenager with a spectacular talent and, like McIlroy, his ball-striking is an ornament on the game but destructive putting has been the impediment between Garcia and major titles.

He has consistently averaged more than 29 putts a round in his career and in the last two seasons on the US Tour his finishing from inside five feet and from inside 10 feet has been outside the top 100 in the statistics. With those putts tournaments are won and lost.

After the 2008 Irish Open at Adare Manor McIlroy was so frustrated with his putting that he started working with a specialist coach, Dr Paul Hurrion, who lists Padraig Harrington among his clients. Hurrion could see the problem: “He was relying an awful lot on hand-eye co-ordination and science basically tells us that you can’t rely on hand-eye co-ordination to get you through time after time.”

The outcome of the analysis was an hour-long drill that McIlroy has taken with him to the practice green for the last 18 months but he hasn’t closed his mind to other coaching aids. Towards the end of last season he started listening to a Bob Rotella audio book, ‘Putting Out of Your Mind.’ For a player as beautifully natural as McIlroy it reflected the conflict between feel and received correctness.

“I just feel like I need to free everything up,” McIlroy said at the time. “I still work with Dr Paul Hurrion but I just need to let it flow a little more. Obviously, when you are thinking about mechanics the way Paul teaches, you can get a little bit wooden. So I am just trying to free it all up.”

Bannon is convinced that he’s getting on top of it: “He made a few changes in his putting and he’s in a good place with that now. He putted better at the end of last year and he will continue to improve. It’s the result of a lot of hard work. One of the things he does is make a chalk line on the green and keep trying to make putts from 10 feet. In practice he can hole about 100 in a row.”

Going into the final day at Abu Dhabi, one shot behind, with another chance to win, that’s the kind of roll he needs.

McILORY IN EUROPE 2009

Stroke average 69.51 (1st)
Driving accuracy 63% (66th)
Driving distance 301.4yds (5th)
Greens in regulation 78.1% (3rd)
Putts per greens in regulation 1.761 (20th)
Putts per round 30 (111th)
Sand saves 66.2% (9th).

Source:The Times

Andy Murray topples the giant to set up quarter-final with Rafael Nadal

Taking on sporting Goliaths and making them seem weak is currently fashionable in British sporting circles and committed boxing fan Andy Murray followed the example of heavyweight world champion David Haye by cutting down to size 6ft 9in John Isner in the early hours of today.

Just as Nikolay Valuev lacked the craft and guile to get the better of Haye, the counterpunching of Murray, seeded five and chosen by many as the man to win his first Grand Slam title at the Australian Open, was too accurate and too unyielding for his American opponent.

"I'm playing well, no question about that," Murray said. "I just need to play like I have been and maybe a bit more if I want to win the tournament. Today when I was down I hit a lot of winners, served smart, was just thinking the whole time."

Isner came into the event on the crest of a wave of elation after winning his first ATP World Tour title just a week earlier in Auckland and an impressive win in the previous round over the talented but erratic French 12th seed Gael Monfils underlined his potential but Murray was more than equipped to deal with the threat and is through to the quarter-finals after his 7-6 6-3 6-2 win on Melbourne Park’s Rod Laver Arena. He will now play second seed Rafael Nadal, the defending champion, after the Spaniard overcame Ivo Karlovic, who stands one inch taller than Isner, 6-4, 4-6, 6-4, 6-4.

Isner unleashes his serves from an enormous height. His feet leave the ground by almost 10in at the point of impact and with his huge frame at full stretch and the racket vertical from his tensed right arm, connection with the ball comes about 15ft above the court. Murray is revered as one of most accomplished returners of serve in the game with the best-balanced and most positive first step in his favour but still it was a question of getting an early read on the threat.

Simple trigonometry decrees that Isner can unleash the ball at angles players of a shorter stature would find impossible and there were occasions when the delivery flew more than 8ft wide of Murray’s outstretched racket. Five aces flew from the giant American in his initial four service games which might sound threatening but in terms of percentages they were numbers that suited the British cause. Murray was allowed an average reaction time of just 0.7sec as the ball repeatedly veered away from him at speeds above 140mph. Isner needed to make an initial impact but Murray seemed the more assured and dominant from the service line.

The Scot’s first five service games saw him lose just two points. Then his confidence and poise seemed to waver as two of the most straightforward forehands thudded into the net. Suddenly the red light of danger shone brightly. He faced the first set point against him in the championship but Isner’s inexperience saw him chance a hard-hit crosscourt forehand that ended wide.

The American’s lack of big-match experience showed again in the tie-break. With pressure mounting his first double fault of the match came at an inopportune moment and following up Murray struck with the crispest of backhand volleys. One set point went to waste but shot selection proved costly to Isner again just short of the hour mark. His touch with the racket lacked the subtlety and guile of his opponent and an attempt at a drop shot predictably fell into the net.

Every analyst who speculated on Murray’s game plans was insistent that the fifth seed’s patience would play the biggest part. The initial aim was to weather the Isner storm and not become dispirited if a succession of aces went flying by. A first-round encounter against 6ft 8in South African Kevin Anderson gave a taste of what was to come but Isner, entered among the list of seeds when Frenchman Gilles Simon was forced to withdraw with an injured thigh, was clearly of better quality.

Nevertheless, a lack of agility and speed off the mark, particularly from the back of the court, were the giant’s weakness and Murray quickly identified a tactic to drive into Isner’s self-belief. There was a time former coach Brad Gilbert implored his charge not to overplay the drop shot but every time Murray attempted one against Isner he produced a winner.

Mind games are an important part of any sport at the top level and Murray’s efforts at convincing Isner he still had much to learn were reaping dividends. Unlike in the first set, the Scot regularly threatened the big serve in the second and sensing the time was right to increase the pressure, he found an ally in the elements. With the blazing sun almost directly overhead, Isner suddenly found his vision troubled on the ball toss of his serve. He squinted, he frowned, he complained, sending the perfect signals of body language across the net that all was far from well. Murray is a contestant prepared to pounce on any discomfort and he knew the time was right to up the pressure.

Three break points rapidly ensued and Isner sent a sad forehand wide to put Murray in place to serve for a two-set lead. The spirit of the American may have been dented but all resistance was not dead and he in turn registered a trio of break points. Murray, however, was not to be dragged back and forced another Isner forehand error to take a two-set lead as the match edged towards the two-hour mark.

All the main protagonists in the opposing side of the draw remain in the competition with home Australian hopes centred again on Lleyton Hewitt and a large quota of optimism. Unlike two years previously, when he was forced to battle until 4.34am to overcome Marcos Baghdatis, victory required only 54 minutes as the Cypriot retired citing a painful shoulder at 6-0 4-2.

Hewitt’s good fortune might be brief as the 22nd seed now must face Roger Federer and look to end a 14-match losing run that stretches back to a Davis Cup encounter in late 2003.

Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Murray’s conqueror two years ago who progressed to become the suprise finalist, was also impressive, dispatching a succession of forceful serves and stinging baseline winners to beat German veteran Tommy Haas 6-4 3-6 6-1 7-5.

Perhaps the most finely balanced encounter sees Nikolay Davydenko confront the Spaniard Fernando Verdasco.

Source:The times