Andy Murray will continue his US Open adventure in the quarter finals on Wednesday against the current world number 17 Juan Martin Del Potro from Argentina.

The match will be third on the Arthur Ashe court, which will give a start time of no earlier than 2pm (7pm UK Time),  the doubles match on first has just taken over 2 hours so start time for Murray’s match will nearer to 8-30pm-9pm, depending how long the womens singles match between Safina and Pennetta takes.

In the only match the two have played on tour, the match ended in controversy when Del Potro, insulted Andy’s mum after the two were arguing over Del Porto aiming a volley at Murray’s head. Del Potro would then retire from the match at 1 set all complaining of back problems. If you have not seen the confrontation, here is a clip of the action

The young man from Argentina has grabbed a lot of headlines in recent weeks with his unbeaten run of 23 matches that has seen him win his first 4 ATP titles and rise from 65 to 17 in the world and after that jibe from Del Potro about Andy’s Mum, I’m sure Murray will relish ending Del Potro’s run tomorrow.

It’s an impressive feat to maintain an unbeaten record for that long, but we shouldn’t get too carried away with this record and Andy Murray should fear nothing. The four tournaments that Del Potro has won have been lower tier events that very few of the world’s top players attended, as one tennis pundit put it

Del Potro has won 4 Mickey mouse tournaments whilst the real players were playing master series events and Olympics

In his run to his four tournament wins, Del Potro only actually played three players in the top 40, Philipp Kohlschreiber(35th), Richard Gasquet(15th) and Andy Roddick(9th). His first tournament win came in the week after Wimbledon on the clay courts of Stuggart, with all the top players in the Canada preparing for US hard court season. He played no one of note until he beat Gasquet in the final.

He then moved onto Kitzbuhel in Austria, staying on clay he won the title their without playing a top 50 player all week. Del Potro did eventually make it to the US, but only once all the top players had left for the Beijing Olympics. He played the Los Angeles event and made the transition to hard courts well, he met Andy Roddick in the final of that event, which was the most significant win of the run so far, though Roddick was not having the best of time, he lost to world number 93 Viktor Troicki in his next event.

His final event win was in Washington, two weeks before the start of the US open, where the highest ranked player he beat was world number 48 Tommy Haas.

Andy Murray on the other hand was playing in the two major master events in this period, he reached the semi finals of the Roger’s Cup losing to world number 1 in waiting Rafael Nadal and he won the Cincinnati masters beating the world number 3 Novak Djokovic in the final. In this period he also beat world number 10 Stanislas Wawrinka, Ivo Karlovic, Dmitry Tursunov and another win against Djokovic.

The only negative result in this period was the loss to world number 77 Yen-Hsun Lu in the first round of the Olympics – The best players are beating by lower ranked guys from time to time especially if they are not prepared, like Murray was at the Olympics.

With the history between these two from earlier this year which reportedly spills over from their junior days were Murray beat Del Potro in the Junior French Open, this should be a spicy affair and it would appear that bookmakers agree that Murray is most likely to break Del Potro’s unbeaten run, with the Scot odds on favourite to win. If you are placing a bet, the best odds for a Murray win, can be found at Betfair, who are offering a free £10 bet you sign up.

Add your own views on this story below- Comment now (1 Comment so far) »