[Joe]

Andy Murray was bundled out of the Australian Open in the fourth round via a shock defeat to world number 50 Mischa Zverev, 5-7 7-5 2-6 4-6.



Following Novak Djokovic's second round defeat on Thursday, hopes were high for Murray to win his first Melbourne title in his sixth final, but 2017 will not be the year in which he breaks his Aussie duck.

Zverev piled forward into the net to serve and volley an astonishing number of times - 119 occasions in all.

This unrelenting pressure on the world number one saw the German recover breaks in the first set and snatch it himself, 7-5.

Murray levelled the match by winning the second set, also 7-5, having again been up by and conceding breaks on two occasions.

Zverev, however, pulled away from his more illustrious opponent in set three and did not look back.

This was a mixed bag of a tournament for Murray then until this defeat - clunky against Illya Marchenko, dismissive of Andrey Rublev, clinical against Sam Querrey but ultimately without answers to Zverev's aggressive play.

The defeat will surely hurt Murray as the path to an elusive Australian Open title had seemed to clear with the early departure of Djokovic.

However, he must now look onwards and knuckle down to ensure a good set of performances in March's US hardcourt Masters swing and the European clay season.

[tamila]

I believe he told an interviewer that he would love to win Roland Garros

[jdonald]

Agreed Aileen, I have read somewhere he may not play in the Davis Cup.  I have a feeling he needs a good rest after all the exertions at the end of last year and his training camp in Miami. He could aim for  RG , I cannot see nadal being fit all the time and that also applies to FED.

It is interesting who is going to win the AO now, perhaps Grimitrov

[moonglow]

I'm sure Andy will quickly find a way of beating Mischa whenever he sees him again on a tennis court.  I do think Andy would be wise to skip the coming Davis Cup, however this is in his hands. Regarding Roland Garros I think that Andy can win this one, but at that time he'll need to be aware of Rafa and Federer - Novak will be worn out and unable to reach the second round there ! I hope Andy will do well in the Masters which are around the corner.
Just now I haven't got the current score for Rafa and Monfils, but I'm now hoping for  an AO win for Rafa.

[counter_ puncher]

Thanks for the report. It must have been difficult to write it after all the hopes we had and Andy had. He can look back at a tremendous performance in GS in recent years. Maybe it was his turn to stumble. In fact, all the top players had already experienced such surprise exits. Let us remember Seppi vs. Fed, Stakhovski vs. Fed, Querrey vs. Djokovic. Nadal suffered more than one "shock" defeat as well.
I share bbh's view that something got to Andy so that he was simple not able to do more, maybe due to some hangover from the past months. Had he been fresh, he would surely have figured out how to beat Zverev. He is not considered a tennis brain for nothing.
I hope he can quickly put his disappointment behind him, takes some weeks off, celebrates Sophia's birthday and appears on the tennis stage rejuvenated. After all, he is still the world's No1.

[Fiverings]

Martina was on TV saying that she's sure Andy is suffering from mental fatigue after all the effort he put in to get to the #1 spot.  Meanwhile Andy has departed for the UK, but no word so far as to his plans to play in the DC.  Maybe he'll make up his mind after he's had a few days' rest, but travelling to Ottawa so soon after come back from Oz might well be too difficult a time lag for him to deal with, not to mention the extra travel fatigue.   However playing in the DC means so much to him, that I can see it being a difficult decision for him to make. Of course he might be prepared to go along to offer his support like he did last year, and make a family holiday out of the visit.

   Yes, with Sophias first birthday coming up I'm sure that will be at the top of his schedule.

[Aileen]

   Yes, with Sophias first birthday coming up I'm sure that will be at the top of his schedule.

DC only finishes 2 days before Sophia's 1st birthday and I think they may want a family party.

Thank you. I'd forgotten about that.  Hard to believe she's one now.  How time flies!

Of course this problem wouldn't have arisen if the tie had been in the UK, but I realise we can't always have that! Still, if we lose there will be a relegation play-off later in the year, although with Dan and Edmund now making good progress, then there's a chance we could still win without Andy.  They're going to have to get used to doing without him at some point though - but that's something I don't want to think about.

[Aileen]

I admit that I share the same concerns, not just about his team, but having Lendl as his coach for Slams, because as far as I can see, and I know ATL says the same, that there has been no noticeable improvements in Andy's game.  In fact he seems to have regressed rather than progressed.  I don't mean he's playing worse, because obviously he would never have got to #1 had that been the case, but I do find his attachment to the baseline worrying, and for that I blame Lendl because it was certainly not Amelie's way.  Whether Delgado goes 100% along with this I wouldn't know, but if he's not too happy about it then that could cause some friction between him and Lendl, although fortunately Jamie seems a  laid-back sort of guy - maybe too laid back? - so I doubt he'd be looking to stir the waters and cause Andy any undue stress unless he absolutely had to.

I still maintain that the main reason Andy lost this match wasn't so much because he couldn't quite figure out how to beat Zverev, but because of his reluctance to come up to the net more often, with the result that he kept trying to lob Zverev from the baseline or hit high balls at him, which Zverev more often than not smashed right back, costing Andy the point.  I freely admit I was screaming at the TV because, for whatever reason - maybe it was mental fatigue as Martina has claimed, and Johnny Mac too - Andy just couldn't seem to get it into his head that this ploy simply wasn't working.  His lobs did work on two or three occasions at least at the beginning of the match until Zverev got wise to them.  Andy's so good at the net when he comes up to it, so a few dinky drop shots wouldn't have gone amiss, and Zverev certainly used them to good effect because he frequently caught Andy out because despite all his athleticism, which he seems to rely to get to these shots, he either just didn't get to them, or got to them too late to do much about them, although from what I saw when I watched a replay, Zverev anywhere near the net was lethal, but to me it would have been a ploy worth trying.  There were a few really good exchanges at the net but not nearly enough as far as I was concerned, but then I'm a big fan of S&V having lived through all the years of it before the baseline slog-fests started to creep into the game and pretty much ruined it for me.  I see little point in wasting energy pulling opponents around the court, unless the aim is to tire them out, until sooner or later one of them makes an error or manages to hit a winner.  Maybe though I'm missing some subtlety here.

It'll certainly be interesting to see how Federer deals with Zverev, but, whatever the outcome, I am expecting a rather different match.