If you haven't noticed by now, it's Wimbledon time. And that means the yearly articles on why British tennis players aren't succeeding.

The one that really annoyed me is this one, Why O'Brien is not fit to fly the flag, from Alan Fraser, being rather nasty about British no 1 lady Kate O'Brien.



Now I don't see the harm of having a few qualifications behind you, even if you are a talented tennis player. What if your tennis career doesn't work out? What's wrong with being brainy? And why rely on others to speak English? I'm sure Miss O'Brien's victor this week, Michaella Krajicek, knows the English language rather well; does this not make her too brainy?



If Alan Fraser is the best sports reporter we have, it really is time to fear for the future of British sports reporting! And I'm sure Fraser's not even the 150th best sports reporter in the world, whereas Kate's the 150th best tennis player. Maybe you should do your job properly before critiscising others?

That's absurd. It's up to her. I didn't see her choose to be come British female No. 1 and have the this fool rant and rave. She plays tennis. Maybe if she wanted to be further up she should abandon her other interests, perhaps. It's HER CHOICE.

I highly doubt that there are not any female tennis players who will do better from Britain.

This is a nothing article, a total waste of space. Yeah she lost, yeah she's not as good as 149 other female tennis players. Yeah she's a girl who wants to have academic success too. Where's the real problem? Oh i forgot, she won't be a poster girl for you to build up and slag down, along with attractive photos all the time.

In purely tennis terms, at the moment, she is not good enough to win Wimbledon and all that. Yes. If she wanted to do so, (and was able to), then maybe exams are a bad idea. EXAMS OF THREE YEARS AGO. Jesus H Christ.

And of course, no Wimbledon coverage would be complete without a bit of Henman bashing.

Tim: I'll be back in 2008

Now, I've always thought that, given such stats as having a career-high world ranking of #4, 15 tournament titles and reaching six grand slam semi finals, it would be clear that Henman had a pretty good career. However, other people seem to know better:



And there's some negative comments on him on Tim bows out with a hard-hitting message to the next generation: You're a load of wasters although to be honest, the Mail's published some comments defending Tim's record, as well as a few positive articles about him.

Oh, and there's a rather crappy article about the prize money in the men's and women's tournaments:

Equal prize money - but Wimbledon's women win game, set and cash

A rather unscientific comparison of the men's and women's pay per game- a close game between Lleyton Hewitt and Richard Bloomfield, compared with a Justine Henin walkover. And no mention anywhere of the hours of training top men and women put in.

Alan Fraser may of missed out the fact that the career of tennis lasts for women only in to the mid 30's at most.

He must of also be reminded that he isn't number 150 in the world at anything and thus even worse than Ms O Brien.

I can't believe that I've just read that. This guy is supposed to be a sports reporter for a national newspaper and he's saying that she shouldn't be furthering her education?! What is she supposed to do if she has an injury and can't play tennis anymore? What about when she retires when she's too old to be competitive? Too many people have wasted their lives by putting all efforts into sport or music (for example), then discovered that (for whatever reason) they aren't raking in the millions. So what do they do? If you've got A levels then you've got a half decent head start to getting other jobs. The Mail would be the first to complain if she had to stop playing tennis and her only income was the dole.

It's becoming one of these days where EVERYTHING is annoying me.

jack

Well if he was so utterly desperate for British tennis success, he should have fucked off and made a carrer for himself.

How dare he take up a safe job in reporting? Our tennis is suffering, dammit!

Mr Fraser mentions Sir Steve Redgrave when bashing Kate O'Brien's academic success. As far as I'm aware, a lot of top rowers are university educated- just look at the Oxford-Cambridge boat races, competitors such as Matthew Pinsent, Ed Coode and Tim Foster have gone on to win Olympic gold medals. Should these people have neglected their education and concentrated on their rowing?

+ the fact with Wayne Rooney it's self evident he's never been near a book in his life; I'm sure the loutish aspects of football are frowned upon by Mr. Sports Journalist of the Century.

This will seem incredibly judgemental and is likely to appear at first glance possibly incredibly snobby, but Steve Redgrave does seem well educated. I've not been able to find anything about his education though. But I wouldn't be surprised if he started rowing on the university circuit.

jack

I'd always had tennis down as the national sport in Daily Mail Land. It seems to me that they don't like it much.
Then again, maybe that's just because Johnny Foreigner is better at it than us.

Are there any sports that we're half decent at? Except Formula 1 at the moment, but Lewis Hamilton is one of those funny looking types...

jack

There's snooker and darts. And did you know that there's been more British winners of Wimbledon than any other nationality, so we can still claim we're good at that!

We're half decent to very good at most sports.

Just not as good as.

Someone, please. Please tell me that this is a pisstake. He cannot seriously be saying that education is less important than hitting a ball across a net for a few years. Notice that it's the trouble with our "women" players. Oh, no, it's fine for a man to improve himself, but girlies??? No.....what are they meant to do if they get injured, or when they get past 40? Find a nice husband to cook and clean for?
This is the first Mail article that's really made me angry- it's absolutely vile, the sexism, the typical anglocentric view of language, the medieval attitude to education.

Maybe Alan Fraser is jealous of educated woman, having dropped out of some polytechnic for idiots.