Defending Madrid Masters champion Andy Murray suffered a straight sets defeat to world number 5 Juan Martin del Potro in the quarter-finals.

The Argentine battled back from a break down in first set to take the win 7-6 6-3. World number three Murray was 5-2 up in the first set but eventually lost on the tie-break as his Del potro upped his game.

Del Potro now ranked number five in the world, though still 1000’s of points behind the top 4 had failed to post a win in their first 3 matches, but made it 4th time lucky against Murray on the Scot’s least favorite surface.

Though Murray is the defending champion here in Madrid, he was not actually defending any points this week as the tournament was switched from an indoor event in October to the new clay court event in May. The Scot will hold on to his points until then, but now unfortunately not his title.

Del Potro will now play Roger Federer, who battled past Andy Roddick 7-5 6-7 (5-7) 6-1. Federer now legaly owns Andy Roddick and if the american loses again to Federer, the Swiss ace will own Roddicks children if he ever has any. His career record against the American is now a whopping 18-2.

In the other half of the draw, Rafael Nadal saw off Fernando Verdasco. The world number one will now face Novak Djokovic, who beat Ivan Ljubicic 6-4 6-4 on Friday, in the semi-finals.

Andy Murray continued his improvement on clay with a straight sets win over Spain’s Tommy Robredo in the Madrid Open. The Scot took the match with a 7-5 6-1 victory.

Murray looked sharp from the off and was never troubled on his own serve, but he did lack the killer touch in the first set he failed on numerous chances to convert break-points in the first set, but eventually took his opportunity in the 11th game to take a 7-5 lead.

Murray them raced throught the third set as he made light work of Robredo , breaking in the third, fifth and seventh games.

Top three seeds Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic also made it through to the quarter-finals and we could be set for an all top 4 semi final with Murray appearing to have the toughest quarter final match against world number 5 Del Potro.

Andy Murray who will turn 22 on Friday, produced arguably his best result on clay- after all he beat a top 20 Spanish “clay court specialist” in Spain with his win over Robredo, a three-time French Open quarter-finalist.

After his win, Murray said,

I was a little tense when I had my chances and didn’t take them, I noticed that at this altitude the ball tends to fly faster, and because the court is sprayed with water regularly the balls also tend to pick up weight. I strung my racquets more tightly to compensate and was happy to be able to control the ball in the wind here. If you don’t take your chances when you’ve got them, then he’s going to kill you, When you attack him he defends well, and if you let him attack he really does it.

Andy Murray scrapped his way into the third round of the Madrid Masters with a 7-6 (11-9) 6-4 win over Simone Bolelli.

Murray, the defending Madrid champion, all be it on a new surface and new place on the ATP calender, was made to fight hard for his second round win (Murray’s first match after bye in first round) against the world number 61 in the first set, coming through several mini-breaks in the tie-break.

The second was a little simpler with one break of serve securing victory.

Murray, the new world number three, though still seeded 4 here, will play Tommy Robredo in the last 16 on Thursday.

There were also wins for second seed Roger Federer and seventh seed Fernando Verdasco, but ninth seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga lost to Ivan Ljubicic.

This is the second time Murray and Bolelli have met and surprisingly it was at the same stage of the same event last year, that match though was indoors on hard courts in October and with the Scot leading 6-0 2-1 the Italian retired.

Murray went on to the victory that week and secured his second career masters title. Repeating this feat will be an almost impossible task with the tournament now switched to clay and “Clay God” Rafael Nadal in such devistating form. Though most experts admit that perhaps Murray more than anyone could upset the Spaniard, it would take an allmighty performance, the likes that the Scot has failed to produce on clay to date.

Andy Murray is the new Madrid Masters champion after beating Giles Simon in the final of the indoor event 6-4 7-6 (8-6).

The match was no classic and was littered with errors from both players, but Murray showed his class and maturity to win the first set with a single break in the 6th game and despite Simon upping his game in the second, the Scot was still able to win the second tie break after saving one set point on Simon’s serve.

Murray has now won the last two master series events and becomes the first ever player to win Cincinnati and Madrid back to back. He will be competing to win three in a row in the last masters event of the year in Paris next month. In fact Murray has now become the most successful British male player of the last 70 years becoming the first ever British player to win two master events in their career.

Although Murray played well below his best today, the one part of his game that did hold up throughout the entire week and the entire match today was his serve. He did’nt give up one break in the whole match today and served a very high 67% first serves.

After the match Murray said

I planned to play a little bit better than that from the back of the court, Both of us made a lot of mistakes but both of us were a little bit tired from yesterday, him probably more than me. But my serve this week has been awesome and that’s the reason why I won the tournament. I don’t think he had a break point in the whole match.

Andy will now move on to St Petersburg next week where he will be defending the title he won last year.