Andy Murray’s 4th spot in the world was under threat last week, with the Scot needing to reach the final to retain his ranking. He actually went onto win the event and will more than likely be the world number 4 when the US Open comes around.

The 2nd and 3rd placing though are not certain with Federer regaining 2nd in the world this week after reaching the Toronto final beating new world number 3 Djokovic along the way. The difference between these two is just 130 points and with Federer beating Djokovic in last years Cincinnati final both have a lot of points to defend this week. If Federer fails to reach the semi-final this week he will be passed by Djokovic regardless of what the Serb does.

Juan Martin Del Potro continues to fall down the rankings as he continues to struggle with injury. He has not added any points to his 12 month total since the Australian Open in January and will lose a further 2000 points if he does not compete at the US Open. He will likely drop out of the top 20 if he does not reach final at flushing meadows.

Andy Roddick also continues to drop in the rankings, though has just been diagnosed with a virus that may have been affecting his energy levels over the last three months.

With just a few days to go, the question on every one’s lips is not who will win the world cup, its…

Who will win Wimbledon 2010?

The 2010 Wimbledon draw has been made and the favorites to lift the title have safely made it through to the second week. Roger Federer, Andy Roddick, Robin Soderling and Lleyton Hewitt have now been eliminated and there are just 4 men left.

Rafael Nadal in the last 3 months has returned to his very best, after a 10 month period that seen him lose for the first time at Roland Garros, unable to defend his Wimbledon title and a string of poor results, the Spaniard looks to be back to his best both physically and mentally. He has regained his French Open title and world number 1 spot and now looks to regain his Wimbledon Title. Though he disappointingly went out of Queens Club at the quarter final stage. In his first match he looked good, though was then pushed to 5 sets in next two matches and looked to be suffering from a recurring knee injury. A straight sets win in the 4th and an impressive quarter fianl win over many folks tournament dark horse Robin Soderling pit any injury doubts to bed.

Despite all this Federer was the favourite ahead of Nadal to lift the 2010 title, something that may seem it little strange when you consider that Rafael Nadal now holds a 14-7 record over Federer and has won 6 of their last 7 matches, but he is the favorite now.

Andy Murray is the bookmakers 2nd favourite to win Wimbledon this year and they certainly believe the event winner will come from winner of the Murray Nadal semi final. His odds were 3 or 4 times that of Nadal or Federer, but those odds have been reducing after five very impressive wins., dropping just 1 set all tournament to date. His form since reaching the final at the Australian Open has been woeful and the Scot was looking like he was suffering from the crushing defeat in Melbourne. That form looks to behind him now and he now looks to be in the right frame of mind to claim his first grand slam.

Novak Djokovic’s failure to ever mount a challenge at Wimbledon and recent average form had seen him drop to 6th favourite but after overcoming tough 4th round match against Lleyton Hewitt and cruising past Lu. Djokovic is now favorite to reach the final from his semi final match.

Tomas Berdych – If you placed a bet on Berdych to win Wimbledon this year at the start of the tournament, then you would be in the running for a mighty profit. The big serving check wasn’t really on anyone’s radar, always consider an “under performer” until he reached the semi finals of Roland Garros last month. He eliminated Roger Federer though so does he really deserve the least likely to win tag?

Betfair have been offering the best odds all week on just about all the potential winners and when you sign up, you’ll receive a free £25 bet.

Favorites already Eliminated…

Roger Federer – 2 years ago after losing to Rafael Nadal in that now infamous Wimbledon final, people started to question whether or not the career of Federer was now on a downward spiral – he proved his critics wrong then, coming back to claim his 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th grand slam titles – though most importantly he never had to face Rafael Nadal in any of those events. Those same question have now surfaced again. To add to his woes he lost the final of Halle where he had been unbeaten since 2002. He was just a few points from being eliminated in the first round by Falla and even struggled past Hasse in the 2nd before looking comfortable against Clement in the 3rd round and Melzer in the 4th Round. It would be Tomas Berdych who eliminated the now former champ.

Andy Roddick was last years champion and was the 4th favourite coming into Wimbledon though he had dropped to 5th favourite to win this year. He took out Britain’s great hope last year in the semi finals before losing an epic final to Roger Federer. He has since had a decent 12 months whilst still not really challenging the top players. Early knock out at Queens was not the best preparations, but had looked decent in the first 3 rounds. He was dumped out though on court 2 in the 4th round by journey man Lu.

Roddick dropped the 4th favourite tag to Robin Soderling – The French Open finalist has cemented his place inside the top 10 and has recent wins over Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray – He had been looking mighty impressive until he met Nadal that is.

The second Monday of Wimbledon is always a busy day, 8 men’s 4th round matches and 8 women’s 4th round matches need to be played and with just 3 matches assigned to each of the 2 main show courts it means that the public with ground passes get to see some potentially great matches. It also means that there is potential that a big star is going to be in unfamiliar territory on a smaller court and we may see an upset.

That’s what we got when Yen-Hsun Lu knocked out of the big favorites Andy Roddick on court 2 – Whether being on court 2 did affect Roddick or not is still in question, but Lu makes it through to his first Wimbledon quarter final to face Novak Djokovic.

So far the Roger Federer has looked a little shaky in the first 2 rounds and looked supremely good in the next two rounds, so when he faces Tomas Berdych on Wednesday which Federer will we get. Or will it be Berdych who decides who wins this one, a considered “under achiever” so far can the Czech player finally perform on the biggest stage.

In the bottom half of the draw, Murray has been making smooth progress and faces 10th seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the quarter finals, which should be the toughest match to date for the Scot. Meanwhile in the final match Nadal and Soderling renew there now growing rivalry can Soderling record another win over Nadal?

The third round of matches are now complete and the line up for the round of 16 is known. Of the 4 favorites to win Wimbledon, In the top half Roger Federer and in the bottom half Andy Murray have the toughest matches, whilst Andy Roddick and Rafael Nadal both have unseeded opponents.

Federer takes on the resurgent Jurgen Meltzer, in recent months, the talented Jurgen Melzer has produced some of his best tennis and has risen to a career high of 16 in the world. He reached a career best semi final at Roland Garros last month only losing to Rafael Nadal and along the way came back from two sets down to eliminate Novak Djokovic. If Federer  is not on the top of his game, then this one could well be another stonker!

Andy Roddick faces unseeded Yen-Hsun Lu and the winner of that match will play the winner of probably the match ofthe day between two of the best outside bets for the title. 3rd seed Novak Djokovic will take on former Wimbledon winner and former world number 1 Lleyton Hewitt.

In the bottom half of the draw Andy Murray will take on the winner of Queens this year and 18th seed Sam Querrey, see a Murray Querrey preview here. The winner of that match will definitely play a Frenchman as 32nd seed Julien Benneteau takes on 10th seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.

Meanwhile Rafael Nadal will face another Frenchman, Paul-Henri Mathieu and will play the winner of what should be another great match between 6th seed Robin Soderling and 9th seed David Ferrer. Soderling as so far negotiated his way through the first 3 rounds with consummate ease and is looking supremely good – Watch out the rest of the draw for this Swedish dark-horse!

Andy Murray continued his dominance of the start of the 2009 tennis season with a straight forward straight sets victory over world number 3 Novak Djokovic and claim the Miami masters title.

Murray beat Djokovic 6-2 7-5 in 103 minutes.

This is arguably the biggest title of his Murray’s career to date, the Sony Ericsson Open is affectionately known as the “Fifth Slam” attracting all of the top players every year.

Miami is Murray third Masters title, following wins in Cincinnati and Madrid last year.

Murray dominated the first set in searing heat winning the first set in quick time. The second set proved more tricky and was seemingly going the way of Djokovic with Murray trailing 5-2, but the Scot hut back to win the last 5 games and claim the title.

After his win Murray spoke in front of the capacity crowd,

“The conditions here are so tough – I know sitting there is difficult but running around is pretty tricky too….He started to come to the net a lot more and I lost my timing a little bit and I started to find it a little bit difficult towards the end of the second set…..I’m training very hard to try and do that (win a slam) but there are so many great players just now – Novak, Rafa, Roger – and they’ve been dominating the Slams for the last few years, It would be nice to get in there and take one.”

Andy now heads back to Europe for the start of the clay-court season and will new his partership with Alex Coretja as he trys to come to grips with the red stuff.

Andy Murray took a huge step forward in his young tennis career, answering his critics and squashing the scepticism of some negative British tennis press to record his first win at an elite masters event.

The British number one recorded an outstanding victory over the world number 3 Novak Djokovic in 2 very closely fought sets winning 7-6 (7-4) 7-6 (7-5) in two hours and 23 minutes.

It was only two months ago that many British tennis Journalists questioned whether Andy Murray could win at the top level - rather than see the potential and focus on his successes, they criticised his on court manner, his coaching choice and his autobiography.

Today he answered them in fine style. Two weeks ago Roger Federer was world number 1 and Andy Murray had never beaten Novak Djokovic and the young Serb had inflicted heavy defeats on Murray in their last 3 meetings.  Though times are a changing in the tennis world, roll on two weeks and Roger Federer’s reign at number 1 is coming to an end and Novak Djokovic has just lost twice to Andy Murray.

The scot started the match the better and looked the most likely to break first. He got carved out his first chance in game five, but was not able to convert and again in the 7th game forcing another chance, though again Djokovicclosed the door on Murray. Throughout this period Murray was holding his own serve with ease and would have been disappointed not secure the break. Not break of serve would mean a tie break was needed to separate the two - In many a similar match, the best player in the set doesn’t always win the set but this was not the case today. Murray remained ice cool, breaking immediately in the tie break and continuing is high level of service. Murray raced in a 5-1 lead at the changeover and soon wrapped up the set.

Djokovic, the current world number 3 and Australian Open champion rallied in the second set and managed to secure the first break of the match, to go up 2-1. But as we have seen Murray do on a few occasions in the last two weeks, the Scot broke back immediately. Andy turned up the heat in the eighth game securing a second break after some typical Murray scrambling that seen Djokovic eventually net an attempted smash. Murray was now serving for the match and the pressure started to toll, he played his first poor service game of the day that included two double faults and missed four match points before Djokovic broke back. On one of those match points though, a drop shot from Djokovic hit the net only to drop on Murray’s serve – the Scot missing out on victory by centimeters.

It should have been a shattering blow for the Briton at that point the bookmakers odds would have swung in favour of Djokovic, with his spirit crushed few would be surprised if Murray had went on to lose at this point.  As confidence flowed through Djokovic, Murray held his nerve and managed to force a second tie-break.

The tiebreak was as close as the whole match and the score stood at 4-4, the next point saw the Scot win an epic rally with an outstanding backhand winner. He then earned two match points after Djokovic double faulted – Murray needed both those points to win and on his sixth match point Murray secured a landmark win with a thumping volley.

The talk now will be is the big 3 now the big 4. At this very moment Andy Murray is comfortably in the top 2 players in the world. In the last two months Murray has only been beaten by one man, Rafael Nadal. Andy Murray has not suffered a loss to anyone other than the soon to be number 1 since the French Open and is now the only player other Rafael Nadal to win a main event since the Rome masters on the 5th of May.

It’s huge because to win these tournaments is tough nowadays, ‘ve played five days in these conditions and had eight or nine matches in the last couple of weeks. But I’ve put in the physical work and it’s paid off. I got very nervous and he was hitting the ball really big but I hung in well, It was tough for both of us and there were a lot of long rallies. Your legs really burn out there and they were some of the hardest conditions of the year. But I stayed calm throughout and didn’t waste any energy – especially when I went behind in a couple of matches.  In the past maybe I’d have let that get to me but now I’m playing top players on a regular basis and I’m better equipped.

Andy Murray will take on Novak Djokovic in his first ever masters event final later today in Cincinnati. This will be the second time he has met Novak Djokovic in as many weeks. The match will start around 3pm local time (8pm UK time) and will be shown live on Sky Sports.

Djokovic made the final with a commanding victory over Rafael Nadal, 6-1 7-5 in the semi finals. This ended Nadal’s run of 32 straight victories, which included two grand slam wins. Djokovic is the first player to beat Nadal since Juan Carlos Ferrero beat Nadal back in early May at the Rome masters.

Up until last week Murray had not beaten Djokovic and lost heavily in their last 3 matches, but Murray turned it around last week recording a memorable victory, winning the match 6-3 7-6 (7-3). Strangely all their matches have all been at Masters events, their first encounter was back in 2006 at the quarter finals at the Madrid masters Murray lost 1-6 7-5 6-3 and was the only set Murray had won until last week.

In 2007 followed 2 back to back semi finals in Miami and Indian wells, where Djokovic really took Murray apart, in Miami he won 6-2 6-3 before almost whitewashing Murray 6-1 6-0 in Indian wells. Then earlier this year at the Monte Carlo masters event played on clay the result was another easy win for Djokovic 6-0 6-4.

The bookmakers still see the 21 year old Djokovic, one week younger than Andy Murray, as the odds on favorite to win today. Though last week you could get as high as  9/2  on a Murray win, this week its much less and the best odds are around 9/4 mark.