Great things have been predicted for Andy Murray in his first full year on the main tour, and the Scot, very much the teenage boy wonder, has said himself that he is hoping to finish the season ranked in the world's top 20.

But he admitted after yesterday's second-round defeat in Adelaide that he could possibly have "a difficult year" competing against the leading racket-swingers.

Murray said:
- Full Story (telegraph.co.uk)

Agree with you wotnopimms

Hopefully the press will realise that this might happen and not start ripping Andy apart everytime he loses...
Yes, that sounds negative, but you know what I mean

Lol, unfortunately the British press, even the nicer of them, have to cater for the British public, who for the most part (understandably) do not know enough about tennis to understand that winning Wimbledon is not the be all and end all.....
All the public see is Queens and Wimbledon - therefore if British players don't do well there they're just 'good old British losers' - not quite good enough, but they try. Nothing taht they achieve abroad really matters - hence in all the video montages of Andys year, all we saw was Queens, Wimbedon and the match with Tim.

Hopefully, Andy will be able to chnage this view - not necessarily by winning Wimbledon or anything, but just by opening tennis up to a wider audience, and getting a new generation of kids interested in it.

(sorry if this sounds really pretentious - its not meant to )

Totally agree with the comments about the media etc.

Regarding expectations for Andy - I think we should look at Gael Monfils. He is 6 months older than Andy and won the other 3 junior slams in the year that Andy won the us open juniors. Gael only just got to 30 in the world. I will be mightily impressed with Andy if he ends the year in the top 30 too.

I think the major shift for Andy this year is that he will have gone from being viewed by his peers as the 'new kid' who turned into a surprise package, to being a 'marked man' who everyone will want to stamp their authority on at the earliest opportunity.  He just needs to keep last year's belief mentality going, and not let the media pressure get to him - a helluva lot easier said than done I would have thought..