What a match! What a match! Andy Murray put 2 and 3/4 sets of poor tennis behind him and made a fairy tale comeback to reach his first ever Grand Slam quarter final at Wimbledon, completing an amazing match against Richard Gasquet to win 5-7 3-6 7-6 (7-3) 6-2 6-4.

Just as the sun was about to set tonight Andy Murray wrapped up the most unlikely of comebacks when it had looked like the sun was setting on Andy Murray’s Wimbledon just a few hours earlier. When down 2 sets and Gasquet up a break serving for the match, the young fiery Scot stepped up and turned the match around from what looked like a complete un-winnable position.

After a tentative start by both players, Gasquet began to take control of the match, as Murray continued to falter Gasquet flourished. At 6-5 with Murray serving to stay in the first set, Gasquet managed a few break points, in what will go down as one of the most charged games ever on centre court, a pumped up Murray began to show some signs of improvement as he saved break point after break point, but it wasn’t enough and Gasquet eventually broke to win the set. An early break followed in the second and it looked as if we were heading for a Brit Free Wimbledon!

At 4-4 with Murray serving, those fears were being realised as Murray lost his serve for the third time in the match and Gasquet took a 5-4 lead and would serve for the match. If Murray was to stay in this match he would have to break now for the first time in the match. A mixture of good shots from Murray and unforced errors by Gasquet, that looked very possibly as Murray rushed to 0-40 lead and three break points. Gasquet saved two and Murray’s chance of a comeback were looking less likely. Now the turning point. Gasquet served a double fault and handed the break back to Murray.

The pair would both hold serve and tie break would decide the third match. An obvious tight Gasquet began to make mistakes and Murray raced to 3-0 lead with two mini-breaks. Gasquet would get 1 back and bring the score back to 4-3. This is when Murray stepped up and played his best consistent tennis of the match yet, to win the next three points.

Murray carried his form into the fourth set and this coupled with a mis-firing Gasquet allowed Murray to gain two breaks of serve and win the set 6-2.

After a “comfort break” from Gasquet that was met with a round of boos from a pumped out Wimbledon crowd. The tactic of using his comfort break did no favours for Gasquet, Murray broke the Frenchman in his opening service game and now serving well Murray would be difficult for Gasquet to break back. This proved to be the case and the eighth seed didn’t get another break point in the match. 

After 3 hours and 56 minutes of the most intense tennis Murray got his first match point on the Gasquet serve in the tenth game, though he wouldn’t win the match on this point. Gasquet forced Murray to serve for the match and Murray did not disappoint the Wimbledon crowd who had been through a major roller-coaster of a match, dare we compare to Henman Wimbledon match! He would get his second match point on the 4 hour mark and finished off the match with a big serve down the middle.

After the match Murray said,

The light was tough at the end and I wanted to try to finish the match, That was the best moment I’ve ever had on a tennis court. To come back from two sets to love and win it is an awesome feeling. The crowd got behind me just when I needed it and to have them behind me was a privilege. I think he got a bit nervous towards the end of third set. I had to keep fighting, he was completely outplaying me and once I won that third set his head went down and I kind of ran away with it

Murray now faces the easy task of Rafael Nadal in the Quarter finals, I’m sure he will in win 3 sets or maybe not  – watch this space for what will likely be another fantastic match.

Andy Murray will today attempt to win again at Wimbledon and for the first time in his career reach at grand slam quarter final. Murray will take on French 8th seed Richard Gasquet on centre court, the 4th round match will be the third match on meaning the match will likely begin around 5pm. 

Murray has reached the 4th round of a grand slam on 4 previous occasions, twice at the US open and once at the Australian open and here at Wimbledon 2 years ago when he lost to Marcos Baghdatis.

Richard Gasquet has allready made been as far as the Wimbledon semi finals when he lost to Roger Federer last year, this is his only notable grand slam result.

These two players could hardly be more evenly matched in stats, Murray is 11th and Gasquet is 10th in the world rankings, both have won 5 career titles and they both have very similar grand slam results (excluding last year’s Wimbledon that Murray missed), 4th rounds at US open and OZ open and poor results at Rolland Garros.

The two have met previously on two occasions and unfortunately for Murray Gasquet his won them both. Their last encounter was at the ATP Masters Series event in Paris at the end of last year in three sets 6-3 0-6 6-4. Their first meeting was in 2006 in Canada at another ATP Masters Series event, Gasquet won in two sets 6-2 7-5.

One week down of the Wimbledon championships and some of the favorites have already gone. Of coarse Federer and Nadal are still there and they are joined by Andy Murray.

Before the grass court season began, Murray had been placed as preliminary 4th favorite behind Federer, Nadal and Djokovic. After Queens and the Wimbledon draw had been made he dropped down to the fifth behind Andy Roddick. The American may have initially lagged in the bookies thoughts because he had some injury doubts.

Djokovic and Roddick are now both gone and Andy Murray is now considered third favorite to lift the title next sunday. The bookmakers are still making Federer and Nadal as over whelming favorites, with average odds of 7/10 for Federer and 17/10 for Nadal, Whilst Murray is still at big odds of 20/1 on average.

His odds have dropped though from 30/1 as it was when the tournament began. The bookmakers simply still cannot see by Federer or Nadal winning which is why you can get such good odds on the third favorite.

Murray’s opponent tomorrow Richard Gasquet is at average odds of 29/1 to win the title, look for the odds of the winner of that match drop tomorrow.

In the top half of the draw, there is three challenges to Federer’s ambitions, Marat Safin has average odds of 36/1, you would have got 1000/1 before he knocked out Djokovic. Marcos Baghdatis has a real chance of making semi finals again and has very generous odds of 39/1, similarly Mario Ancic at 45/1, the last person to beat Federer at Wimbledon.

The Wimbeldon championships for 2008 are now starting to take shape, as we enter the second week, we still have Andy Murray in contention and still on course to meet with Spaniard Rafael Nadal.

Murray and Nadalare right at the foot of the draw and both face tough seeded opponents. Murray though will have the toughest of the two matches as he take on last year’s semi finalist adn 8th seed Richard Gasquet, Nadal will take 17th seed Russian Mikhail Youzhny who thrashed Nadal 6-0 6-1 earlier this year in India.

In the other Quarter of Murray’s half is where all the upsets have been occurring, Janko Tipsarevic (Roddick’s Conqueror) will take on Rainer Schuettler (Blake’s Conqueror) and Marin Cilic will take on Arnaud Clement.

The top half of the draw will perhaps se the most interesting as match as current champion takes on former Champion when Hewitt takes on Federer. The winner will play either a recovering Mario Ancic or Fernando Verdasco, Ancic is coming back from a long term illness and the un-ranked Croat has lived up to the expectation of potential challenger.

The two remaining fourth round matches will see Marat Safin, who put out Novak Djokovic meet Stanislas Wawrinka and Marcos Baghdatis meets Feliciano Lopez. Baghdatis has been great grass form so far this year and should make semi’s in this little quartet. Though unknown quantity of Marat Safin lurks, though Wawrinka has had a great 2008 so far.

After a slight stumble in the second set Andy Murray beat former world number two Tommy Haas in 4 sets to reach the fourth round at Wimbledon 08.

The British number one won 6-4 6-7 (5-7) 6-3 6-2 to reach the last 16 for the second time at Wimbledon, the match was wrapped out in two hours 35 minutes, though likely should have been finished of quicker and in straight sets. Murray lost to Marcos Baghdatis two years ago in the fourth round, but this time he has set his sights on much more.

Things did not immediately start well for Murray when he lost the opening six points, fortunately it was Haas serving first and Murray was able to recover from 0-30 down to hold his serve and then was able to break Haas in the next game. Murray then had another break point chance in game seven but it went begging. Murray held serve though with same fine serving he had showed in his previous Wimbledon matches this year.

Andy Murray carried his form in to the start of second and again broke serve in game three with some superb passing shots, then completely against the run of play Haas broke back, Murray seemed to lose concentration for the first time in the match, which proved costly. With the set in his hands he allowed Haas back in and the German stepped up his game and took the second set to a tie beak. The momentum seemed to be switching from Murray to Haas and eventually Murray was making more errors, a double fault in the tie break proved fatal as he lost the set,

Haas kept up the pressure and for a few games at the start of the third it looked as if the German was about to take control, Haas had two break points, but Haas messed one chance up and Murray served an ace for the other. That was Haas chances over, in the next Murray broke Haas as it was now the German’s turn to serve a double fault. Murray held serve for the rest of the set to take a 2-1 lead.

Murray completed the recovery when the young Scot took full control of the fourth set with two breaks, After the match Murray said

I thought it was a good match, I maybe had the chance to win in straight sets but, apart from the last few games of second set, I thought it was a really good match. I’ve managed to deal with the tight situations. I probably didn’t play the best tie-break today, and in the past that might have affected me, but today it didn’t. The first three matches were very good. I’ve only dropped the one set, but I’ll have to play better if I want to go further.

and Tommy Haas said,

At 1-1 in the third I had two break chances and he came up with the goods. Then in the fourth he came up with some unbelievable shots. He has a very good first serve which some people underrate. I think he needs to work on his second serve but overall he has a game that’s tough to beat.

Andy Murray will next face eighth seed Richard Gasquet after last year’s semi-finalist beat Gilles Simon 6-3 6-3 6-7 6-3.

Andy Murray will again step on centre court later this afternoon. He will take on Tommy Haas in their third round encounter.

Tommy Haas is somewhat of an under achiever, having once been has high as 2 in the world rankings, he has failed to ever make quite live up to his talent, Semi final appearances at the Australian open and quarter finals at US open is his best results in grand slams. At Wimbledon until last year he had not made it by the third round.

The two have met twice before, both times the matches were played on hard courts at indian wellls. In 2007 Murray won in 3 sets and earlier this year Haas won in 3 sets.

The pair will be second on centre court after yelna Jankovic continues are bid for the womens title.

It seems that the comment made by Andy Murray two years ago regarding who he would support at the football world cup in 2006 still runs deep with many English fans and even sports writers.

The now infamous comment in which he inferred he would be supporting anyone but England at the World Cup still draws negative press coverage and is still a clear bone of contention with many English people.

Even though the comment was made in jest after Tim Henman and the reporter had been mocking Andy Murray for Scotland’s failure to qualify for the World Cup. The Daily Mail, that stand-up newspaper, took some selected comments and ran them as being anti-English and also adding in the complete fabrication that he wore a Paraguay shirt. Startling is the number of people who use this as a reason to “hate” Andy Murray.

If you want the real story on that listen to Tim Henman who was at the interview

A recent news article (June 2008, so not recent if your eding this in 2010) by Brian Moore (ex English and British Lion rugby player) at the Telegraph explains this is the reason why he won’t support Andy Murray and a recent comment on this very site calls Andy Murray rather strongly a racist for his comments against the English football team.

First off clearly Brian Moore doesnt really bother to research his stories and secondly Brian Moore seems to forget, when we play football, we play as separate nations. Same goes for Rugby, Cricket and any other sport England and Scotland compete separately at.

I’ve got big news for Brian Moore – Andy Murray is not the only Scot who would support anyone but England. England is Scotland’s biggest rival in Football! Why would a Scottish football fan, support their biggest rival. It doesn’t make them anti English, it simply makes them normal. And you will not find many Scots that do it in a nasty way, it’s generally jovial and good fun, some of the Ant-Murray comments are far from jovial!

When it comes to tennis, it’s an individual sport and players compete under their home country, in Andy Murray’s case that is Great Britain (England or Scotland are not countries). There will be some British tennis snobs that will simply never accept the likes of Andy Murray. Some English fans (the genuine racists) will dislike Murray purely because he is Scottish, these few are hopefully in the Minority, but they will be fueled by idiots like Brian Moore.