MURRAY IS A MASTER

 

 

There are three levels of senior professional tennis. The lowest level are the regular ATP events, the bread and butter for the world's best players. Over 60 of these tournaments take place per year, Queens tournament, the warm up to Wimbledon is one such occasion. Andy Murray has already won two such tournaments this year(in Doha and Marseilles) alone, a total of five in the whole of his career. The highest level are the Grand Slams. Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and US Open. Best Grand Slam performance so far for Andy? His quarter final at Wimbledon '08. In between those two levels are the Masters events, there are nine of those in total.

Andy Murray's last tournament before the Beijing Olympics was the Cincinatti Masters. He arrived in the US Midwest off the back of a semi final appearance in the Canadian Masters and though he'd made a few Masters semis previously in his career he'd never made the final of a Masters series. The last time a Brit even made the final of a Masters series was when Tim Henman made the final of the '04 Indian Wells Masters before getting beaten by Roger Federer though he did get that result off the back of winning the '03 Paris Masters series. No Brit has ever gotten out of Cincinatti with the trophy though and the tournament has history going back to 1899.

Andy got given a bye in the first round which led him to face American Sam Querry. Querry had made the second round off the back of beating Frenchman Paul Mathieu 6-4 4-6 6-3 in the first round. The first set started dodgy as hell for Murray who went 3-0 down before getting his act together. Once he hit form though he turned the set around enough to force a tie break which he won smoothly. The second set wasn't quite a demo session but Querry certainly didn't put up much resistance. Andy won 7-6(7-3) 6-1 and the hope must have been that he made a better start to the next round. One bullet dodged, four more to go and it was an improvement on last year's performance, an injury dogged first round exit.

In the third round Andy faced Dimitry Tursanov. This time round Andy blitzed his opponent from the start, breaking his serve twice and generally cruising his way to the first set. The second set proved to be more of the same and the Russian was unable to live with the Scot's fire. Murray won the match 6-3 6-3 allowing him to keep his 100% record against the Russian who was trying to blame the ball boy for his defeat! Not that Andy cared though. For him it was the first time he'd made the quarter finals at this event since '06 when he beat one American Richard Ginepri in the third round only to get beaten by Andy Roddick in the quarter finals.

Next up was Carlos Moya and things didn't go to plan for the Scot. The Spaniard broke serve immediately and it wasn't long before Andy was holed below the water line and the first set lost. He wasn't on best form in the second set either, once again going 2-0 down before turning the set round with a five game winning run and forcing a third set. Now Murray was back in business and went on to get payback for Moya dominiating him in the first set by deep frying the Spaniard in the third. Murray won the match 2-6 6-3 6-1 and reached the tournament's semi finals for the first time in his career, making it his second Masters semi in a row.

So, it's semi final time and it was the Croatian Ivo Karlovic next on the hitlist. Another bad start from Andy didn't do him any favours and though he came back to level the first set, his tall opponent finally getting beaten by the Ohio heat and Murray's lobs. Murray built on that in the second set, breaking his opponent early on and seemingly in cruise control untill Karlovic managed to break back and seemingly turn the came round before Andy levelled after a weak game by both players and then Karlovic seemed to run out of energy(I though being from Croatia he'd be able to handle the heat?). Still, Murray was given a match but still won 6-4 6-4 to reach a Masters final for the first time in his career.

So, the final. Against Novak Djorkovic, a Serb people have been raving about. Australian Open champion. Cue national anthems. Cue one heck of a rumble. Neither player could break the other's serve in the first set but it was certainly Andy that got all the break points going. Still, the result was an inevitable tie break and Andy held the edge to go a set up. The second set looked to be in danger when Djokovic got the first break of serve but Andy smoothly broke back and went on to lead 5-3, at duece on his own serve...and somehow blew four championship points, allowing his opponent to force a second much tighter tiebreak...and then Murray came back and won the match 7-6(7-4) 7-6(7-5).

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