Andy Murray

Andy Murray has been given a bye in the first round of the Rogers Cup after gaining the 8th seed position in the masters tournament and in the second round will face Qualifier.

Tomorrow will see the start of the first round matches, the Murray and the other top seeds wont start their campaigns till Tuesday or Wednesday. Looking ahead to later in the week, their a few potential tantalising matches. In the top half, Roger Federer could meet Andy Roddick in the quarter finals. Roddick has only ever beat Federer on 2 out 17 matches between the two, though one of those wins was their last meeting earlier this year.

The bottom half which includes Andy Murray - The Scot could meet Marat Safin in the third round, Novak Djokovic in the quarters and Rafael Nadal in the semi’s. 

Andy Murray will again join the top tennis players of the world next week at the next ATP tour masters event, the Rogers Cup, played at the Rexall Centre at York University in Toronto.

The Rogers cup is Celebrating its 127th anniversary, it is the third oldest tournament behind only Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. Forty four of the top 44 players on the ATP Tour have been confirmed for the Masters Series Canadian event. There will be 4 former Rogers Cup champions in the field including defending Champion Novak Djokovic, two time champion Roger Federer (2006, 2004), 2005 champion Rafael Nadal and 2003 champion Andy Roddick.

The Toronto tournament will be the first tournament played by many of the top players after Wimbledon, this is the case of all the current above defending champions, world number 4 Nikolay Davydenko and world number 9 Andy Murray.

Murray pulled out of last week’s Indianapolis Tennis Championships to prepare better for the upcoming weeks includes 2 master events, the olympics and the US Open.

Last year this was the Scot’s first comeback tournament after his long lay off because of a wrist injury sustained 4 months earlier. He only managed one win against American Robby Generpri, before losing to Italy’s Fabio Fognini, who was a lowly ranked 139 qualifier.

In 2006 though Murray made it to the semi finals of tournament, where he dispatched 4 players before losing to his this years Wimbledon 4th round opponent Richard Gasquet. Among the four players he beat on his way to the semi finals, was 2 seeds David Ferrer and Jarkko Nieminen, former world number 1 Carlos Moya and Britains own Tiger Tim Henman. It was the second time Henmanand Murray had met on the tour an the first victory for Murray, they would meet twice again in 2006, Murray winning both matches.

Although the tournament is called the Roger’s Cup - it does not currently belong to Roger. Novak Djokovic beat Roger Federer in epic final last year, which seen the young Serb record his first victory against the world number 1 after losing in the last 4 matches. It was perhaps here at this tournament last year that we did in fact see the end of Federer’s dominance. The two would meet a few weeks later in the US Open final and although Federer won that match, he would lose the next between the two at the Australian open.

Rafael Nadal will continue his quest for the world number 1 position, the Spaniard will again take to his least favorite surface, hard courts - But he can take heart that he has tasted victory here in Toronto, he beat Andre Agassi in the final in 2005 and only lost to Djokovic in the semi’s last year.

Andy Murray, Nikolay Davydenko, Andy Roddick and James Blake will be amongst the players looking to make a dent in the Federer / Nadal / Djokovic dominance of the 2008 so far.

Today Andy Murray may have delivered on his expectations, but the same could not be said for many of the other seeds on a day of some major upsets.

Andy Roddick
The biggest upset on the men’s side was the departure of the two time finalist at SW19, Andy Roddick. The big serving American was beaten by an inspired Janko Tipsarevic in 4 sets 7-6 (7-5) 5-7 4-6 6-7 (4-7). Since Novak Djokovic’s departure yesterday, Tipsarevic is now the highest ranked Serb in the men’s draw and he is showing the world that there is more than Djokovic to Men’s Serbian tennis. After the match, Tipsarevic said,

This means the world to me, I’m just glad that I won and Serbia will have more representatives in the men’s singles draw

At last week’s Bootle’s event, Andy Murray narrowly beat Tipsarevic in an exhibition match played on grass. Tipsarevic will now play Dmitry Tursunov.

Rafael Nadal
Rafael Nadal needed work hard to overcome the challange of Latvian teenager Ernest Gulbis. At Queens two weeks ago, Gulbis narrowly lost Andy Murray in three sets in the match that Murray picked up his thumb injury. Nadal needed to come back from a set down to beat the impressive Gulbis 5-7 6-2 7-6 (7-2) 6-3, Gulbis showing signs that he will soon be a top 20 player, with a little more consistency and fitness.

The Brits
Unfortunately the only British winner today was Andy Murray. British qualifier Chris Eaton was defeated in straight sets by Dmitry Tursunov 7-6 (7-2), 6-2, 6-4 in one hour 56 minutes. The big serving Brit made a good fist of things in the first set and took it to a tie breaker, but Tursunov was just on a slightly higher level than Eaton and was outplayed much of the rest of the set. In the Ladies side, defending Wimbledon champion Venus Williams was pushed hard by the British number one Anne Keothavong, but after a spirited first 11 games Keothavong eventually was overturned by Williams 7-5 6-2.

Andy Murray is now the only Brit left in either singles draws.

Other upsets
9th seeded American James Blake continued his rather poor Wimbledon record continue when he stumbeled out 3-6 7-6 (10-8) 6-4 4-6 4-6 to German Rainer Schuettler. Blake has failed to make it past the third round In six appearances at the All England Club.

The first round draw Wimbledon 2008 has been made and Andy Murray has been drawn to meet Veteran French player Fabrice Santoro. The 35 year old Santoro still has a decent ranking of 53 and has been as high as 17 the world back in 2001.

The Scot has be drawn in the last quarter along with world number 2 Rafael Nadal and will meet the French open winner in the quarter finals if both make it through their first 4 matches. Murray has avoided any of the “big names” in the first four rounds though faces a very tricky potential second round match against  Xavier Malisse who reached the semi finals of Wimbledon back in 2002.

The first potential seed Murray could meet would be Tommy Robredo, though the Spaniard has a terrible record on grass and will likely not make the third round, Tommy Hass looks most likely to be Murray’s opponent in the third round should the Scot make it that far.

If Murray makes it as far as the second week and the fourth round, he will more than likely face another Frenchman, 8th seed Richard Gasquet, 28th seed Gilles Simon and former 2 time semi finalist Sebastien Grosjean are all potential fourth round opponents.

The third Quarter contains Andy Roddick, 9th seed James Blake and 4th seed Nikolay Davydenko, Roddick will be favorite to come through this quarter, though a potential second round match with Janko Tipsarevic is a realistic stumbling block for the big serving American. Look out for a great all American 4th round Match between James Blake and Andy Roddick.

The Top half of the Draw will likely see Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic win their respective quarters, though both players face potential tough games against the two big serving outside favorites. Djokivic will likely have to overcome Ivo Karlovic and Federer may potentially meet Mario Ancic, who has missed much of the last year due to illness.

With the draw of wimbledon 2008 just hours away, we take an updated look at what the bookies rate Andy Murray’s chances of winning. At the time of posting Will Andy Murray Win Wimbledon 2008 (part 1)Murray was placed as 4th favorite to win the event behind big 3, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic.

Since then though we have had Queen’s club and Andy Murray’s injury blip which has seemed to have had negative impact on his chances. The list of the current favorites looks like this..

Andy Murray has went from an average of 16/1 with traditional bookmakers to 26/1 as of this very moment, though the smart players out there would perhaps chance there luck at betfair as they currently are offering a massive 59/1 on Andy Murray to win and you can also get a £25 free bet!

Andy Murray is now 5th favorite with the bookies and it’s Andy Roddick who has jumped Murray in the list, though his own odds have gone up as well.

It is becoming clear that the bookies are making this very much a two horse race between Nadal and Federer who both won their grass court warm up tournaments. Nadal has moved up from third to second favorite and his odds more than halved from 4/1 to 21/10 and now you get more than evens on Federer to win his average odds going up from 9/10 to 11/10.

Preliminary second favorite Novak Djokovic has dropped to third spot after losing again to Nadal, this time on grass at the Queen’s Club final last week.

Other big movers are Ivo Karlovic who ran Nadal very close at queens club only losing on a third set tie break, he is up to 7th favorite at this moment and Andy Murray’s losing opponent at Queens Ernest Gulbis is now registering on the betting sheets at around the 100/1 mark, prior to Queens you could have got 1000/1.