Andy Murray threw away a 1 set lead as he crashed out of the Pacific Life Open at Indian Wells. He went down 2-6 7-5 6-3 to Germany’s number 2 Tommy Haas.

The British number 1 had started brightly, breaking in the third and fifth games to take the opening set relatively comfortably.

But it was Murray’s old problems on his serve that haunted him. At the start of the second set his serve simply deserted him and Haas stormed to a 4-1 lead. With Murray though whenever his serve is misfiring, he always has a chance with his great ability on return and indeed Murray did recovered the break, the joy was short lived as Hass broke again to level.

Murray then missed on five break points on the Hass serve in the decider. He would rue those misses as Haas broke him penultimate game to love, before the 29 year old from Hamburg in Germany served out to take the final set 6-3.

The 20-year-old berated himself afterwards, saying:

If I had played a bit more aggressively in the third set – like I did in the first set – then I would have won the match….I still think I was good enough to win the match but I didn’t.

Murray’s on court attitude was slightly better today compared with yesterday, though it was after a large scream and vent of frustration at losing a break point to go 4-3 up that he then went on to lose the next service game to love. After the match Murray said,

It was better than yesterday, that’s for sure…I got annoyed a couple of times but that was more because I was playing a bit defensive and wasn’t quite finding a way to get on the offensive in the third set….But the mindset was way better today than it was yesterday. I was much calmer at the start of the match.

Tommy Hass will now face Roger Federer in the quarter finals.

Update : Tommy Hass has recently been recovering from a shoulder injury and will now actually miss his quarter final match due to injury

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Andy Murray came through a tough third round match against big serving 6ft 10in Croatian Ivo Karlovic. The young Scot won in three sets 7-6 (9-7) 6-7 (3-7) 6-3 and now faces Tommy Hass in the fourth round on Wednesday.

Murray beat Hass last year in the quarter finals of the same event, but a victory against Hass will set up a likely quarter final match with world number 1 Roger Federer, who Murray beat in first round in Dubai a few weeks ago.

Murray was down a break in both of the first two sets, before breaking back and levelling to force a tie break. Murray won the first 9-7 but he let Karlovic boss the second tie break and the big Croat won it comfortably 7-3.

In the third set Murray raced to a 3-0 lead, but was pegged back before Murray again broke in the eighth game and then served out the next game to win 6-3.

At moments in the match Murray seemed furious with himself as his form was not quite up to his usual level. Though it shows his eagerness to win, getting angry with himself always seems make the situation worse and sees his form dip even further. After the match Andy Murray said,

I was disappointed with my attitude during the match, I was getting really angry and I haven’t done that this year…..I was just in a bad frame of mind and you can sometimes snap out of it, but when you’re playing someone who is as frustrating to play against as him, it’s difficult…I was just happy with the way I came through in the end because I was not focusing as well as I should have been.