MURRAY THE MAN ON FIRE

 

(Image taken from BBC)

 

The US Open, not something that most British tennis watchers keep much of an eye on(there's the time difference for one) but New York is certainly somewhere Murray likes and as a former US Open junior champion, he has every reason to treat it as a second home. Coming into Flushing Meadows he was certainly on form on the other side of the Atlantic, which generally meant that he owed his new coach Brad Gilbert(former coach of Andy Roddick) a lot of New York food.

The more interesting match in the earlier rounds for British fan though had nothing to do with Murray. It itvolved Britain's older heavyweights, Tim Henman and Greg Rusedski butting heads in the first round on one of the nowhere courts. Henman won that match 7-6 6-2 6-3. So far so good but then he went up against Roger Federer in round 2. Well if Tim isn't going to beat the most-worshipped man in tennis on home turf then he isn't going to do much at Flushing Meadows. 6-3 6-4 7-5 and you have to wonder why the David Cup team want him back on that form.

Murray in the meantime had the advantage of being the 17th seed(to which I can only say 'wow')and started off by whacking American Robert Kendrick in front of his home crowd 6-2 1-6 6-3 6-3 before improving in the second round to trash Italian Alessio di Mauro 6-0 6-1 6-1. Chilean Fernando Gonzales gave him more of a headache with 6-3 3-6 2-6 6-3 6-2...which given that the young Scotsman's Achilles heel is getting knackered, left him it poor shape for round four when he got whacked by 7th seed Russian Nikolov Davidenko 1-6 7-5 3-6 0-6. Not that Andy can complain about two Grand Slam last sixteen appearances in one year when he's about the age of the eldest of my kid cousins.

Davidenko in the meantime went on to beat solid German Tommy Haas 4-6 6-7 6-3 6-4 6-4 in the quarters before running slap bang into Federer in the semis and losing 1-6 5-7 4-6. Still, not bad for a guy who I'd never heard of. Federer vs Andy Roddick always looked like a tasty final and the Yanks were always going to hope their guy came through...not this year though, the Swiss dominator took the trophy home after 6-2 4-6 7-5 6-1 win leaving the ATP season to wind itself down for 2006.

Next on the menu for Bratain though was a Davis Cup tie. A Europe-African Group 1 relegation tie...which translate as a match to avoid relegation from football's version of the Championship. Not what should be happening. The new captain was John Lloyd. The opposition was the Ukraine. The location was Odessa which put us on away turf but no one expected the Ukraine to put up that much of a fight and with both Rusedski and Murray fit it looked like easy money.

With the first two singles matches it was a case of so far so good. Rusedski beat 20 year old Sergy Stakhovsky 1-6 6-3 5-7 6-4 9-7 and then Murray followed up with a 6-3 6-4 6-2 win against Alexandr Dogopolov. Win the doubles and the tie is ours. No one should have counted their chickens. It was Jaime Delgado, not Rusedski, who wound up partnering Murray against Stakhovsky and Orest Tereschuk. The Ukrainians won 6-3 6-3 6-3.

It still only needed one more win from Murray to win the tie and that came when he beat Stakhovsky 6-3 6-2 7-5 in his second gingles match. A 20 year old Scotsman called James Baker then got to dip his toe in the water for the dead rubber by playing Sergei Bubka Jr(son of the world class pole vaulter) but got beaten 3-6 6-7. Still, GB is at least spared from further embarrassment and got a tie in the next round of Group 1 midtable matches...followed by a tie against a weak Netherlands side at home in April '07!

And Andy Murray is my pick for BBC Sports personality of the year!

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