Frew McMillan gives his lowdown on British hopefuls Jo Konta and Aljaz Bedene

I think she has a pretty awkward-looking serve. But that’s not to say it’s not a good serve. I think her main asset is her cleverness. I think she’s a smart person. And, unlike some smart people, who are just smart off the court, at times she’s able to apply it on the court as well. And I think particularly given the extra mental help that she’s getting (she's seeing a sports psychologist), I think that makes her a pretty good all-round package.

I think it’s a matter of winning matches by playing in lesser tournaments, rather than going in at the deep end and finding that you can’t swim against the champions. Sometimes it’s important to lower your sights a bit in order to get the match play and hopefully the wins will come while playing against slightly lesser opponents.

Having done that, she’s obviously built up a huge amount of confidence which I think is reflected in her play.

Well, I certainly never experienced anything like that, but anything that helps. If you feel that you need something like that perhaps it’s a boost to concentration and enables you to think in the positive rather than the negative, then so much the better. Why not? As long as it doesn’t cost too much!

Playing in a major, if you win two or three rounds then I think she’s done pretty well. I wouldn’t expect her to get much beyond that but it also hinges on the draw. If she comes up against a top player, I wouldn’t expect her to win, but I would expect her to do well in the match.

That’s right, and he’s hoping to play Davis Cup for Great Britain but at the moment that’s not allowed so he’s appealing. Again, he’s a pretty good all-round player. He’s had a lot more experience this year, having reached a final at the beginning of the year (in Chennai) and playing in the bigger tournaments and having some success.

He’s come into this tournament with a recent win over Gilles Simon at the Winston-Salem Open which is a real boost for him. He’s a confident sort of guy – he’s a little bit like Konta in that respect, with self-belief, even when others might not have as much belief in him. And that could help him in majors to do well I think.

I think so. You look today at his match against Donald Young and I he’s beaten him before, the one time they’ve played. And I would make him the favourite even though Young is obviously going to get a boost by the fact that he’s playing on home ground in his home major. I still think I would give Bedene the slight odds over Young.

You have to go into the circumstances of the individual players – I think Bedene has been here long enough (he first set up a base in the UK in 2008) to be considered if not a pukka Brit, at least to play under the British flag and I think that’s fair enough, he’s been here that long. Konta (who was born in Australia to Hungarian parents) has also based herself here (since 2005) for personal reasons and I think that’s all well and good. If it enhances their careers, then why not?

It does on occasion help to give the other players more rivalry, to give them more camaraderie as well. If you go to foreign lands and you play then it can be a lonely existence but if there are three British women for instance in the main draw, or three British men in the main draw where in the past there may have been only one of each, I think it’s a mutual aid. So it helps the individual and it helps the other alongside them.