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[Aileen]

Tweet from Andy around 10 am today - "Seems like the players are enjoying the blue clay in madrid.... Arrived in rome and the red clay is playing horribly "

Sounds like some wry humour there!

Just to remind everyone - Andy got to the SF here last year and came within a whisker of ending Djokovic's incredible run.  From a report in The Telegraph -

In the opening set, it seemed as though the Scot was going to disappear quicker than the felt from the tennis balls. But, despite losing the first set so heavily, and despite his opponent’s supreme self-confidence, Murray made a match of this.
 
In fact, he made a fantastic match of this, on what was their first meeting since the one-sided final of January’s Australian Open. There was barely a clay-court granule between them, and it was extremely unfortunate for Murray that when he served for the win at 5-4, he hit two double-faults in the game, including one when Djokovic had a breakpoint ... The Serbian won the third-set tiebreak for a 6-1, 3-6, 7-6 victory.

Thankfully Andy's back injury has turned out to be less problematic than was originally feared, but unfortunately it means that he's going into this tournament lacking in match practice.  It'll be interesting to see though if he's made any changes to his game as a result of Lendl being with him in MC and Barcelona.

Also it's nice to see that the hair is growing back in! (see the Murray pics thread) 

[TheMadHatter]

I feel starved of Murray action. Can't wait til he's in action again. Got three exams next week though so unfortunately probably won't be able to see much of his matches, but thankfully will be done by RG.

[Bevc]

Well Andy will have a new practise partner now

[Bevc]

Looking forward to seeing a bit of this



And this

[Bevc]

I was thinking the same thing Bev!.. But on the one hand I was happy Andy had some extra time on the (real) surface..and on the other hand the clay-master is going to get extra time too.

It's Smugfed that I would have the problem with, or should that be Smurf-fed?  Appartently he played a clean game vs Gasquet on Thursday

[Bevc]

Then lets hope that Daveed can break that losing streak he has against Fedex - he's the last match on court, so won't be able to fly out until the following day

[Aileen]

I guess I should post this one too





So nearly made it.

Thanks Bev.  

I assume the draw will be made later today.  Fingers crossed that Andy has a fairly easy opponent for his first match - and definitely not Raonic.

[ChrisMac]

Thanks Bev, certainly got my juices going this morning. How I love watching Andy play, as you said so near, great match though.