Murray, down but not out

Andy Murray may one day hoist a Grand Slam trophy, but his reticence in the Australian Open final demonstrated that Murray is still most comfortable defending and playing the game of forced errors. It's difficult to imagine Andy Murray winning the French Open or even Wimbledon this year. His next best chance is probably the US Open, but we think his best chance for 2010 has just passed him by.

Last year Murray succeeded on two of the tours slowest hard courts, Miami and Indian Wells, and it’s no mystery that he got clobbered by Federer in Cincinnati and by Cilic at the US Open. Cinci and Flushing are home to two of the tours fastest hard courts. That is not to say that Andy is dud on fast hard courts, in relative measures, he is one of the world’s best. He won Cincinnati in 2008 and ran to the US Open final that same year. It’s just that there are a lot of other good hard court players with games better suited to a speedier surface. Del Potro and Djokovic are Murray’s contemporaries and are arguably more comfortable on a faster surface. Murray’s tendency toward defence coupled with the speed of some hard courts gives Djoker and DelPo the chance to hit through him. If he backs away from aggression his hard court prospects post Key Biscayne become less promising.

The speed of the court at the US Open hurt Andy when he battled Fed in 2008; he won just a few games. It has to be disheartening that he didn’t do much better today in the final against Federer. While the courts at Melbourne Park are faster than Miami they are still slow and should have given Murray a fighting chance. We at theNETcourt are not predicting a slamless 2010 for Murray and we would put him slightly ahead of Djokovic and Del Potro in the category of slam prospects for this year. But, Federer just keeps rolling along, and injury or not we still think Nadal will regain his thrown in Paris, so that leaves Wimbledon (Federer, Roddick) and the US Open (DelPo, Federer, Djokovic) as viable slam opportunities for Murray. But we think, unless he adopts the MO of aggression over defence he may have to wait for his maiden grand slam win until Melbourne Park in 2011.