SENT PACKING
Murray crashes out of Queen’s to lucky loser
aNDY MUrraY admitted last night that his Wimbledon hopes have suffered a ‘big blow’ and that he must improve if he is to have any chance of winning a third title at SW19.
Murray was humbled 7-6, 6-2 in the first round of the aegon championships by world No 90 Jordan thompson, a ‘lucky loser’ replacement for the injured aljaz Bedene.
‘It’s a big blow for sure. this tournament has given me great preparation in the past, and when I have won here Wimbledon has tended to go pretty well, too,’ said Murray.
‘If I play like that then I certainly won’t win Wimbledon, but I can play better than that.’
Murray was also disappointed that his pledge to give his prize money to victims of the Grenfell disaster will now only yield £12,000.
‘obviously I would have liked to have done well here for a number of reasons, that being a very good one,’ he said.
At a time when everyone is trying to Keep Calm And Carry On, Andy Murray would do well to apply the traditional British slogan to the merely trivial business of tennis.
the world No 1 has, after all, lost early at Queen’s Club before and still made a decent fist of Wimbledon.
In 2012 he lost in the first round here to Frenchman Nicolas Mahut and went on to make the Wimbledon final, in which he got slightly unlucky when the roof closed as he was going well against Roger Federer.
He made the semi-final at SW19 in 2010 after losing his second match at Queen’s against another world No 90, Mardy Fish.
He also showed, as recently as his run to the semi-final of the French Open, that he can turn around a chaotic build-up to a Grand Slam.
But yesterday at the Aegon Championships there was a look about him that has become all too familiar this year, a certain lack of engagement and inability to respond to the challenge facing him across the net.
It was a surprise that Australian world No 90 jordan thompson maintained such a level of consistency, but equally surprising that the 30-year- old Scot could do nothing to derail him.
‘Right now I am not playing as well as I was 12 months ago. Most of that comes down to confidence in matches really,’ said Murray.
‘It’s not ideal but guys in the past have gone on to Wimbledon having not won loads of matches. Novak a few times has not played any warm-up tournaments and played very well there.
‘I will speak to my team and see if I try to play a few matches, one of the exhibitions next week. I wasn’t planning on doing that but that’s possible now.’
Upsets in a tournament can be contagious, and by the second evening the premier grass court tournament outside SW19 was shorn of both Wimbledon finalists from 2016, Milos Raonic and Murray.
Also gone are Stan Wawrinka and Nick Kyrgios, with Rafael Nadal not even making it to the starting gate. this is not what the Lawn tennis Association, owners of the Aegon Championships, had in mind when they invested in more than 2,000 extra seats for the Centre Court this year.
But Murray’s defeat is a very personal setback, as he admitted. He has won here five times, and both times he has lifted the All England Club title it has been after winning Queen’s.
What will particularly concern him was his errant forehand, always a decent bellwether of how he is feeling generally.
His returns, especially off thompson’s albeit impressive first delivery, lacked penetration. A demoralising statistic was that this was the first time in 136 matches that he has failed to break an opponent’s serve.
Most of all he has to try to rediscover the hunger that has seemed absent for much of the year since his gruelling run to No 1 in late 2016. there were glimpses at times in Paris, but there was little sign of it yesterday.
Murray looked second best from the start against a player who had been sharpened by reaching the Surbiton Challenger final and two matches in the qualifying.
‘I think it’s clear he wouldn’t have had his best day today,’ said thompson, 23, a Sydneysider with a passion for rugby league. ‘I think he made a couple of loose errors he wouldn’t usually make, he had a rough day at the office.’
the three other British men in action at Queen’s fell in a heap, failing to win a set.