Tennis-X Notes: Canas Less of a Dope, Ferreira Wants to Coach Murray

From the BBC: "Tim Henman has backed LTA chief executive Roger Draper despite the sacking of his former coach David Felgate as performance director. Draper sacked Felgate last week as part of a major revamp at the top of British tennis' governing body. But Henman said: "Roger has come in and been prepared to make some changes, and that's his prerogative. He's in the top position to bring the game forward and fingers crossed he can do that because that's what it needs. In the past we have seen the LTA has been pretty stagnant. There haven't been so many changes but he's in there to shake things up and do things the way he feels fit."..."Dr." Ivo Karlovic is averaging 16.8 aces per match in 2006, with Ivan Ljubicic a distant second with 11 per match...Roger Federer on the French: "I would think it's between the two of us (with Rafael Nadal), maybe (David) Nalbandian as an outsider...or the ones who won other tournaments on clay like (Tommy) Robredo in Hamburg."...From AFP's French Open preview: "French Open organisers have opted for a Sunday start to maximise TV viewing figures and they need (Roger) Federer and (Rafael) Nadal to shine with the demands of the tour having taken their toll on some of the game's big names who might have been expected to put up a degree of resistance to the two favourites." -- And we thought we had a run-on sentence problem...Guillermo Canas on getting his doping suspension reduced: "I thank everybody for the backing offered, especially my manager, my physical trainer and my girlfriend. I'm happy with the decision and feeling good. During this year, I've lived a lot of things. It's been very hard for me. But I can finally say that we won the fight to clear my name. I feel clean and with the same security I had on the first day. I've been training to be as well as possible. It's a pleasure to say that I'll be playing in three months time. My goal is to be in the top places as soon as possible. I know I can achieve it. To be on a tennis court is the thing I love most."...From The Guardian on Nadia Petrova's Goldilocks and the Three Bears-road to her current coach: "Crucially she now has a new coach, Tomas Iwanski from Poland, with whom she has complete empathy. At the Australian Open this year, where she lost in the quarter-finals against (Maria) Sharapova, she surprised everyone by claiming her then coach Alexander Mityaev was "too soft" and their characters didn't fit together. She then took on the German Andy Fahlke, only to discover he was "too serious." Iwanski, a friend since Petrova's junior days, became coach No. 3 this year, and the bond was immediate."...From The Melbourne Age on the elusive Jelena Dokic: "Having struggled with what her agent describes as "a variety of little niggling injuries", Dokic has played only one match -- for a first-round qualifying loss in a Biarritz Futures event last month -- since her tearful first-round exit from the Australian Open. Now fully fit and reportedly working with Croatian coach Dado Majoli, she requires a wildcard into what is likely to be her next tournament, a Tier IV WTA event in Italy next month."...Amelie Mauresmo will be the first French player to start as the No. 1 seed in the Open Era at Roland Garros...Lawn Tennis Association chief Roger Draper tells the BBC it's time to stop funding British kids who aren't performing: "I think it's been far too comfortable and I think that's part of the problem when you are a resource-rich governing body. It has surprised me the amount of funding the LTA are spending on players who are 300, 400, 500 in the world and are stuck there. I don't mind funding players who actually have a chance of making it through to the top 100. But we have to start really focusing on our younger age groups, the 10, 11, 12-year-olds. They have to be the warriors and competitors coming through. You can't teach a youngster to compete when they are 16, 17 and 18. It's down to individual responsibility, it's not the LTA's fault. It's down to the players' commitment, not putting in the training, not putting in the effort. Our job is to remove all the excuses for those players not to perform and that's what we are going to do, but ultimately it's down to the individual player."...From Richard Jago writing for The Guardian on the still-active and still-puzzling relationship between Martina Hingis and Radek Stepanek: "Romantics may feel frustrated. While Martina Hingis was winning handsomely in Rome, her boyfriend Radek Stepanek was getting a thorough tonking in Hamburg, losing 6-1, 6-3, 6-3 to Tommy Robredo in the final of the Masters Series. Realists will feel otherwise. It was only a mixture of fortune and opportunism which enabled Stepanek to get so far, and it was still arguably the best week of his career, one which has ended with him reaching the world's top 10 for the first time. Text messages from the lady were also a consolation."...From Neil Harman writing for the Times Online: "Wayne Ferreira, the South African who played in more consecutive grand-slam tournaments than any other player, has said that he is keen to take his first steps in professional coaching by guiding Andy Murray through the 2006 grass-court season and beyond. Ferreira, 34, retired from the professional circuit at the end of 2004 and settled in California, but he has been kicking his heels in recent months and is tempted by the prospect of spending the summer in Britain at Murray's right hand. Bill Ryan, Ferreira's former agent, is a powerful influence at Acegroup, the Scot's management company."