If Andy Murray had the temper of, say, three-time Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton or Turkish NBA pro Enes Kanter, the Scot would probably have done some damage to the locker room furniture, or his limbs, on Saturday night after his stunning loss to Vasek Pospisil at Indian Wells.
Last July, Hamilton, “destroyed” his dressing room in January, so livid was the Englishman after his crash in qualifying for the European Grand Prix. This January, Oklahoma City Thunder centre Kanter tried to take out his frustrations on a courtside chair, in full view of the TV cameras and fans, but his punch left him with a broken forearm.
Murray, despite his emotional outbursts on the court, will probably never go to such extremes. But he should be kicking himself after that defeat to a qualifier.
Doing well in Indian Wells, along with the Australian Open, was one of his stated goals for the first quarter of this season. He said so here in Abu Dhabi, at the Mubadala World Tennis Championship, and repeated them after being crowned champion in Dubai last month.
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“Indian Wells and Miami, a couple of tournaments where, especially Indian Wells, I really want to try and have a good run there,” Murray said during the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships. “It’s one of the Masters Series I haven’t done well at over the years. Really want to make sure that I do well there this year.”
Indian Wells is only one of two ATP Masters 1000 tournaments – the other being Monte Carlo – that Murray has yet to win. He did reach the final in 2009, losing to Rafael Nadal, and has two semi-final appearances as well in 11 visits to the picturesque retirement town in California.
This year he had a great opportunity to end that drought. The draw had been like a manna for the Scot, with Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Juan Martin del Potro – winners of 45 grand slam titles between them – in the other half of the draw, alongside rising stars Nick Kyrgios and Alexander Zverev.
"I've never seen anything like that," Murray was quoted as saying on the ATP World Tour website. "It's one of the toughest sections of a draw of all time. It's obviously a section that ideally you'd want to be avoiding if you can."
Murray, however, made little use of that generous draw, losing to a rival ranked 128 places below him. Pospisil, 26, had not even won a set against the Scot in four previous meetings, but he has one thing in common with Murray’s conqueror in the fourth round of the Australian Open, Mischa Zverev: serve and volley.
Both players took their chances at the net and the world No 1 had few answers. Even Philipp Kohlschrebier caused plenty of damage every time he came to the net during their thrilling quarter-final clash in Dubai, winning 22 points in 31 approaches.
Is serve-and-volley, then, potentially an Achilles heel for Murray? He does not think so, but instead believes his serve let him down against Pospisil. He did struggle with his serve in Dubai as well, broken twice in the opening set by both Lucas Pouille in the semis and Fernando Verdasco in the final. In the second set, against both, he did not face a single break point.
The slow start against Pospisil – he was a break up twice in the first set – cost Murray his Indian Wells dream. There is no immediate threat to his No 1 position though – his closest rival Novak Djokovic is defending 2,000 points in Indian Wells and Miami – but if a report card was made for the first 11 weeks of the season, it would not be pleasant reading for a world No 1.
Dubai does lend it some respectability, but if Kohlschreiber had converted even one of the seven match points he had against Murray, we would have been talking about a mini crisis now.
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