CAMELOT FANTASIES

People should not make big deal about this straight sets loss by Andy against Fognini. As I said last night, Fog is essentially a clay-courter. With the exception of one or two events, where he made the finals of a hard court, he has all his other credentials on clay. Even today, he's not good enough on any other surface but clay. So Andy was faced with a very good claycourter who's been in form since last year. Not to mention, Andy also had to play against a very loud crowd and he had deal with stomach flu just prior. So there were a few things that did not work out in his favour to begin with. Andy could have hung in there for a longer bit but he did have to play everyday and on Saturday, he had to finish his own match and then play the doubles again. The doubles was very tight. Andy did the best he could given the circumstances. Fog was fired up after the doubles loss and Andy underestimated him perhaps slightly. I still think at this point, Fog would have won the match since Andy hasn't won a title since Wimbledon. On top of surgery, he was also in a slump because of Wimbledon I'd say and right now, he's coming out of it. This is a very vulnerable time for him right now but he's getting there of course.

Andy can still have a very strong and proud career despite not having good results on clay on his resume - though never say never. As good as people tend to make Federer out on clay, only 10/12% of his total titles belong to clay. And we all know his only RG title came at the expense of Soderling taking Nadal out first. He did not really beat Nadal to win it.

And not to mention, about 70% Nadal's titles are on clay and 8 out of 13 of his Slams came at RG. And that alone put him as one of the great players of all time.

Sampras didn't do much on clay but his results on grass and hard are outstanding along with his six years straight at No. 1 and the fact that, no one owned him in his era. Even Nadal is slightly getting owned by Nole lately (3 all in Majors since 2011) though it will be interesting to see where things stand once it all ends.

So Andy has nothing to worry about. He's great on 2 surfaces - grass and hard and he has 5 to 7 good years left in him. So he can achieve plenty relying on those 2 surface and become one of the greats if he's in for it. Not sure if he will but he has the potential and he's got 2 great surface in his favoure. He'll just need to do average on clay and perhaps when it all ends, he'll have a few clay titles in the bag as well.