Skyline Drifter

Mmmm, bit premature with that one I think but certainly displays over the last three or four months have revealed that his potential is absolutely genuine. I think Number 2 is a given in terms of actual quality (if not rankings). He's possibly there now. Federer is heading down the way albeit still capable of raising his game to a level Murray has not done (as exhibited nicely in the US Open final). Murray will probably eventually surprass him. I think he's probably better than Djokovic now and, if he avoids any daft banana skins and injury I think as said above he'll probably pass him either after Melbourne or shortly thereafter. He's not anywhere near Nadal yet though. He is getting closer but one win in the US doesn't make it a given he'll ever outrank him and there's only a year between them in age so he's not likely to outlast him. The likes of Del Potro may become a real danger from lower down the rankings too.

He's certainly in much better form currently. Murray trails Djokovic by 1,155 ranking points at this precise moment but he has a chance of bridging that gap or going mighty close in Australia at the start of the year. Djokovic isn't defending much between now and the Aussie Open. He got 5 points in Paris last year and nothing at all at the Masters Cup but he did win the Australian and carries 1,000 points for it that he will drop on February 2nd. Murray lost in the 1st round in Australia last year so is only defending 5 points there so if they were to get to the same stage as one another this time Murray would in effect take 995 points out of Djokovic and if Murray got a round further (say final instead of semi final) he'd take a further 250 points which would be enough in itself to put Murray in front. However, Murray is defending greater points between now and Australia, 250 for winning St Petersburg last year and 125 for making the Q-F in Paris. He needs to match those two results too or the gap will grow. In fact it will grow even if he DOES match them provided Djokovic at least gets beyond the first round in Paris because he'll improve his own points total. Murray will also play Masters Cup this year which he didn't last year but as said above Djokovic got nothing in that anyway so their relative performances in that will also be relevant. I know not if Djokovic is playing anywhere else that he didn't last year which might mean extra points (like St Petersburg for instance).

I've played in the Dumfries Winter and Summer Leagues for nearly 20 years though I 'retired' last week for the time being (team has folded as we didn't have enough players for next season and for a couple of reasons I'm not looking for a new team). I play to an ok standard. Not outstanding by any means. Good enough to hold down a place in a mid table top division team in Dumfries comfortably enough but nothing special. I have a runners up trophy from almost anything you care to name team wise (Winter League C Division, B Division and A Division and Summer League) and a finalists trophy at some point or another from Singles, Pairs, Triples and Fours over that period but I've WON nowt! I've had over a hundred 180 scores over the years though probably only a dozen or so in actual competition rather than practice. Been playing pretty well latterly, lost only one singles match in the whole of the summer league. Relative standards are probably dependent on geography to an extent though. I'd imagine you probably need to be better to play pub league in Glasgow than you do in Dumfries. There are some right dreadful players playing every week in Dumfries but so what? As long as they enjoy it.

Well obviously. Sorry, I maybe wasn't too clear there. The point isn't over when the ball physically bounces back over the net, it's over when it takes a second bounce unplayed by the opponent. In theory he can probably jump the net (without touching it) and even just brush the ball on its way back down to earth and he's deemed to have played a legal shot as he's contacted the ball and it has bounced on the side of the net he has to make it do.

If he hits a shot that bounces on the other side of the net and spins back over to his own side without the opponent touching it he'd win the point. Same as if it took a second bounce on the other side of the net without being hit back.

And yet since them, and Michael Stich at the same time, they've done very little either. The highest ranked German male currently is Nicolas Keifer who is 20th in the world and going backwards career-wise though he was half decent for a while, as was Tommy Haas (currently 39th). Rainer Schuettler at 36 got about half of his points in one glory run at Wimbledon, otherwise he'd be around about 100 in the world and they have a couple of other names at the lower end of the top 100. The highest ranking German female is Sabine Lisicki (no, I've never heard of her either!) who, at 63 in the world, is only 8 places above the highest ranked British female, Anne Keothavong. There is only one other German lady in the top 100. To be honest, over the last decade or so, have Germany really done any more than Britain on the world tennis scene?

That would be me. And it was accurate at the time. Indeed it might be argued it's still accurate. Though that doesn't make me a Murray hater if that's where you're heading with this. I was merely defending Henman from the usual summary dismissal as a "loser" at the time. Murray has now achieved something Henman never did, a Grand Slam Final. But Henman maintained a top four ranking for longer than Murray has yet and made half a dozen Grand Slam semi finals, something Murray is way short of. If Murray should win it will be one of the greatest sporting achievements by a Briton in the last century. Go Murray!

He's defending virtually no points from Melbourne last year either so should be able to increase his rankings points significantly which, even if not moving him any closer to the top three, should certainly cement his position at 4 for a while.

I knew I'd posted that somewhere.

There are two schools of thought about the suspension of the match last night. 1 - It came at the right time. Nadal had broken him in the third set and had almost done so again. He was posing more threat to Murray at that point than he'd ever done before in the match and the halt will cause him to lose momentum again. Murray will get a night to calm down and re-focus on doing all the things he was doing right in the first two sets again when they re-start whilst Nadal will have a night to think about the fact he's two sets down and a long way from success in a tournament he's already done better than he usually does in. 2 - The loss of a service break was merely a blip as Murray was way on top on the day. A new day brings with it every likelihood that the world number one will come out refreshed, with a better plan of how to play Murray, and prove it. A semblence of the Wimbledon form and three sets rattled off could be no problem. Which will it be? Gonna be interesting finding out! He's certainly proved he's deservedly top four in the world these days.

.................and some nonentity Chinese at the Olympics. But I take the point.

Fair do's. I thought the rankings reflected points won in the last 52 weeks, no more, no less. I haven't looked into it in any great depth though so I expect you're right. The rankings are slightly false at the moment in that the calendar move caused by the Olympics sees most players double counting Canada, and by next week, Cincinnatti. That favours the hard court speacialists (including Murray in theory though this time last year he was injured) a little.

Just to be slightly picky he was actually defending 35 points from the same week last year, though it was the Canadian Masters then. He'll gain 465 points.

Murray played superbly in that first set and though it finished 7-6 he completely dominated it. He had absolutely no problem holding his own serve right throughout the set and Djokovic was consistently in trouble on his. Credit to the Serb for not losing his serve under great pressure but the clearly better player won the first set. Now, can he keep up that level of performance...................

All going to plan this week in Cinncinatti. Murray has eliminated Sam Querry 7-6 6-1 and then Dimitri Tursunov 6-3 6-3 to make the quarter finals. He will meet the winner of Andreev or Moya in the quarters and then, if he makes it either Karlovic, Soderling or Kohlschreiber in the semi final since Karlovic just eliminated Federer. He's had a good draw for a change and Nadal and Djokovic are in the other half. Chance to make up some good ranking points here.

I watched it and again he came close to Nadal and, as someone above said, probably looked the better player in the first set, without actually getting it done. Nadal is incredibly hard to put away in points. Murray did well but not well enough. Hopefully the injury isn't anything serious. As I said in the other thread, Murray has a real chance in current form to force himself up to 4th in the world, at which point at least he'd stop meeting the Federer's, Nadal's and Djokovic's before semi finals so it might become a bit self-perpetuating. If the draw for the US contrives to put him in the 4th quarter then he'd definitely be a decent shout for semi-finals on his favourite surface.

In fairness that's a two year old quote and was more than accurate at the time. Nadal's grass court game has developed immensely in the intervening time. At no point in that post does HB say he'll NEVER beat Federer. It's clearly a "this point in time" post.

Robredo has six singles titles to his name. Murray has five. Though Robredo is five years older. Robredo was in the top 10 from May 06 to Dec 07, 19 months. He's not there currently. He peaked at No 5, albeit only for a single week in August 06, spending most of the rest of the time ranked somewhere between 7 and 10 which is pretty much where Murray would most likely be if he hadn't spent so much time injured in the last 18 months. Robredo though is a clay court specialist which does tend to mean his opportunities to win anything are limited to a few months in the early summer. I accept the general point though. Consistency in reaching last eights all over the world will, without winning anything, most likely get you into the top ten in the world, especially if the same one or two are winning all the time and therefore the guys around you aren't winning tournaments either. To be fair that probably means Henman did even better to get to 4 because whilst Sampras was winning three of the big four regularly, there wasn't a dominant clay courter the way Nadal is now so others were picking up points on clay. Murray is probably in a bit of a false position in rankings too as his injuries last summer and this have handicapped his rankings a good bit. He is currently 11 in the world but probably should be about 7 or 8. He is young enough to kick on from there too though Djokovic and Nadal are of the same generation so aren't going to retire out of his way. he's going to have to find a way of raising his game to their levels to compete for majors regularly. I don't think there's much doubt Andy is ahead of Henman at the same age because Henman was quite a late developer in terms of world class tennis. He was 20 before he played Wimbledon as a senior and almost 22 before he made any sort of serious impact. Murray is still only 21. He is one year ahead of Henman in terms of reaching his first grand slam q-f. Henman was almost 24 before he made a Grand Slam semi final.

No. But I do get heartily sick every year of people who know less about tennis than I know about nuclear science laden down with chips on both shoulders moaning about the English and their Henmania (and this fictional belief that Murray is British until he loses and Scottish thereafter that they've made up to fit their agenda) whilst equally and completely without foundation dismissing Henman (and Rusedski but Henman in particular for some reason) as a "choker" or something similar when Murray hasn't yet achieved even a fraction of what Henman did. Does anyone want a spare soapbox? I've finished with it now.

Based on what as a matter of interest? He may well go on to be a better player. You might claim he's better at an equivalent age but Murray hasn't done a fraction of what Henman did in the game yet. Tomorrow will be his first Grand Slam quarter final. The first time he's reached the last eight of a major tourney. Do you know how many times Henman did that? Ten times. And in six of those ten he went on to make the semi final. He made semis at both Flushing Meadow and Roland Garros as well as Wimbledon proving he could have some success on all surfaces. Henman got as high as No 4 in the world in official rankings at one point. Murray's highest ranking to date is 8. None of which is to knock Andy who may yet go on to better all of it and is a sportsman Scotland (and Britain) can justifiably be proud of. But he hasn't come anywhere close to eclipsing Henman yet and without making a Grand Slam final he'll only do so by maintaining the level he's just reached for the better part of a decade.

You haven't got a clue do you? For what it's worth, as recently as 2005 Henman was two sets down to Jarkko Niemenen at Wimbledon and came back to win 3-6 6-7 6-4 7-5 6-2. Just last year he trailed Carlos Moya 2-1 in sets but came back to win 6-3 1-6 5-7 6-2 13-11 in five. I recall well when Henman first came to serious prominence with the British public back in 1996 as an unseeded virtual unknown he faced 5th seed Yevgeny Kafelnikov in the first round at Wimbledon. He won in five sets 7-6 6-3 6-7 4-6 7-5 which was the complete opposite in that he lost a two set lead but Kafelnikov had a double break in the 5th set and still Henman came back from the dead to win it. In all his years at Wimbledon (which involved being a semi finalist four times and a quarter finalist another four times) he rarely had straightforward progress and often won from the tightest of corners. Don't let any of that affect your chip on the shoulder judgements though.

Murray on the brink of eliminating Federer in the first round of the Dubai Open. 3-2 up with a break of serve final set. Federer hasn't had a break point on Murray's serve all day!

Well I don't pretend to be a tennis expert and who's to say what internal friction there may have been between them that was as counter-productive as it was productive. But this is a big gamble from Murray it seems to me as an outsider. If he regresses now then he'll always stand accused of having not had the dedication to go on with a top coach who has a proven track record. Tim Henman was never really the same player after he split from David Felgate in my opinion.

Murray loses in three sets to Gasquet in the q-f in Paris and his late bid to make the Masters Cup fails. Wee bit unlucky to lose the first set to the only break, could have gone either way. Then Gasquet completely fell apart and Murray took the second set 6-0. Took the first game of the final set easily too and missed a couple of great chances in the first two points of Gasquet's first service game to jump away in front. I feel if he'd taken that and most likely the game he'd have won. Instead Murray had a long battle to save his own next service game which he did eventually but fortunately. Lost his third one and never looked like getting it back to be honest. Gasquet is now 8th in the Masters race and will get in unless he loses his semi final to Nalbandian AND Baghdatis goes on to win the tournament. Fernando Gonzalez qualified this afternoon despite his first round elimination in Paris when Robredo went out to Baghdatis which meant that whilst either Murray or Gasquet could catch him they couldn't both do it. Murray finishes no better than 10th in the list and indeed would drop a place if either Nalbandian or Baghdatis wins the tournament. Still, considering he missed a chunk of the season including two majors he did very well to even get close.

I didn't see much of it but that part I saw was unbelievable quality tennis from both players. One of those games where it's shame someone has to lose.