Andy Murray

Andy Murray dropped out the top 10 after only one week in the elite group.

The young brit lost in the first of Rotterdam last week to a wildcard ranked 84 places before and therfore gained 0 points for this week, last year at the same time he had made it all the way to the semi’s of the ATP event in Memphis and gained 130 points for this. He therefore lost these points which resulted in him dropping from 10 to 12 in the rankings.

Murray is not playing this week and will next play in the Dubai Masters starting on the 3rd March, the same week where he will be also be defending 225 for reaching last year’s semi finals at ATP Masters Series event in Indian Wells.

Murray’s drop in ranking’s is significant for this tournament as it means he will not be seeded, Thomas Berdych the new world 10 will take the eigth and last seeding for the tournament. With a tournament with 8 of th top 10 players attending, it means now that Murray could get a first round draw against NovaK Djokovic, Rafael Nadal or Roger Federer.

Wild card Dutch Robin Haase produced a major upset as he brought Brittish Number 1 and new world number 10 Andy Murray crashing back to earth with a fairly easy 7-5 6-3 win in todays Rotterdam ATP event first Round.

The World 94 beat last weeks Marseille winner in just 89 minutes. The Young dutch player had only won 16 matches in total on the full ATP tour and Murray his biggest scalp so far.

Murray was simply not at the races today and was lucky to win as many games as he did, he had in total 11 break points against him, compared to the measily 2 he manged to muscle, none of which he could convert.

After the match Murray said…

I had trouble with my return game,” said Murray. “The court here is much slower than in Marseille….This is just one of those matches you can afford in tournaments like this,” Murray added. “It will not affect your ranking like Master Series or Grand Slams…Now I will have some days off before I start preparing for Dubai and the Indian Wells and Miami stretch. It still has been a good start of the year.

His record now for the year is 2 tournament wins and 2 first round losses, if the pattern keeps up he should win Dubai next month.

Andy Murray, Britain and Scotland’s highest ranked player for over a year now has broken back into the world’s top 10 following his second tournament win of the year at the Open 13 in Marseille on Sunday. He is now Ranked 10th in the world moving up one place from 11th. He reached a career-high ranking of eight last June but his season was as usual disrupted by injury.

The 20-year-old Briton beat Croatia’s Mario Ancic 6-3 6-4 yesterday to add the Marseille open 13 title to his other title at the Qatar Open which he won last month. So far this year he has only lost one match, unfortunately for Murray it was in the highest point value tournament of the year so far the Australian open. Murray had reached the 4th round in 2007, so lost many points for his first round exit this year, which makes his rise back into the elite top 10 all the more significant.

Andy Murray now has five career titles and the young Scot now travels to Rotterdam this week to take on a field that includes Spaniard and world number 2 Rafael Nadal and Russia’s world number 5 Nikolay Davydenko.

On making it back the top 10 Murray said,

Roger Federer won here (Marseille) at 20 too so I’m on the right track….It’s important to win these tournaments - it’s what gives you confidence to go and play well in the Grand Slams…..For me, winning Grand Slams is more important than being number one. Players are judged on how many they win - that’s how good their career is…..But if you are winning Grand Slams obviously you are pretty close to number one anyway….For me, I’ve always set goals for each year. First the top 100, then the top 20, then the top 10. Now it is a Grand Slam….If I can do that in the next couple of years then I’ll be going for number one.

Murray, also went on talk about the future and how he see’s it all shaping up in the future as Roger Federer’s grip on the Tennis world starts to loosen, something that we perhaps seen to start at last months Oz open when another youngster Noval Djokivic won his first grand slam. Murray added

When Federer in the next four or five years starts to taper down, there are a lot of guys like Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, myself, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Richard Gasquet who will be going for number one….There’s a lot of guys who have a good chance of going for it.

Strangely enough the BBC asked former GERMAN player Boris Becker his opinions on Murray, the eccentric German criticised his choice not play in the Davis Cup in Argentina. The decision not play has been more than justified this week in my opinion, the only thing in question with Murray was the way he went about it - Being more open with his Davis Cup coach, fellow team mates which include his brother would have made the situation much less of a talking point.

British and Scottish number one Andy Murray  won his second title of the year at the Open 13 in Marseille against unseeded Croat Mario Ancic. This victory will see him return to the top 10 in the world after beating the Croat 6-3 6-4 in the final today.

Murray began with more of the fine returning which he had produced all week and seen him easily into todays final in France, although Mario Ancic did not let him have things all his own way.

After 7 games on serves Murray, seeded 4th, broke in game eight with a superb forehand winner and then went on to save break-points on his own serve in his next service game as he took the opening set.

In the Second (ultimtaly final set) his serve came under great pressure from the former world top number 7 Ancic, and in game four the young Scot was broke in game four. Murray rallied though and immeadiatly broke back and the broke again in the 7th game, victory followed shortly after, wrapping the game up in 104 minutes.

This was Andy Murray’s first event back after controversially missing Britain’s Davis Cup tie against Argentina to protect his knee. After the match Murray said

I served well throughout and returned really well in the second set,” Murray said….He started getting a bit tired in that second set and that was probably the key to the match….Being in the top 10 is one of my goals. I’ll try to stay there the whole year.

Murray’s record for the year is now played 3 tournaments and won 2 and his only loss for the year so far was in the first round of the ozzy open to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, the eventual finalist in Melbourne.

Andy Murray humbled France’s Paul-Henri Mathieu 6-2 6-2 today in the semi finals of the Open 13 tournament in Marseille.  Murray will no face the giant Croat Mario Ancic in tomorrow’s final.

The British number one broke serve twice in both sets and when Andy got his first serve in he never dropped a point. After the win Murray said,

I played really aggressively, hit a lot winners and didn’t give any chances on my serve…This was without doubt one of my best matches since my return from injury…My serve was strong and my plan was to force him to take the net worked perfectly.

Mario Ancic is currently outside of the top 100, but this doesn’t tell the full story as he missed most of last year through injury, Ancic was as high as 7 in the world back in July 2006. This is his first tournament back this year and he is therefore undefeated in the whole of 2008 and will be looking forward to making it 5 wins in a row and securing his 4th title of his career. Ancic has not actually been in final since 2006 and in this period Andy Murray has made his big leap up the rankings and winning 4 titles on the his way.

In their only other previous meeting back in Auckland 2006, Ancic defeated Murray 6-3 7-6(4). Though Andy did have 10 break points in the match, but only managed to convert 2 of them.

Murray now has a chance to show that he may have made the right decision to miss the Davis cup match against Argentina last month in order to push his singles career to as high a position as possible.