Murray snr halts exodus of the crowd favourites
Jamie trumps brother with doubles victory Tsonga joins departed seeds after loss to Muller
Whatever was irking Andy Murray at Queen’s, there were no such firstround wobbles for his brother. With Bruno Soares, Jamie Murray stormed through his opening engagement in the Aegon Championship,
beating Gilles Müller and Sam Querry 7-6, 6-1 to book a place in the last eight of the doubles.
For the organisers, the serene progress of the last surviving home favourite was a welcome fillip because the tournament had been threatening to turn into a damp squib convention. Through no fault of theirs – the courts look pristine, the stands are rammed – events at Queen’s have been transforming from a competition in which the favourites traditionally prepare themselves for an assault on Wimbledon into a bonfire of renown.
Before it even began Rafael Nadal
and Juan Martín del Potro withdrew. Then Nick Kyrgios retired within moments of walking out on court. And before the first round was done, a procession of seeds headed for the exit: Stan Wawrinka, Milos Raonic and Andy Murray all gone before they had barely warmed up.
As the second round got under way, with the route to the £350,000 first prize apparently clear, the next to crumble was Jo-wilfried Tsonga. Though, in truth, crumble is a little animated a term for the Frenchman’s lethargic departure. Against the world No26 Muller, Tsonga, the fifth seed here, showed all the resil-
ience of a damp paper bag as he lost 4-6, 4-6.
Only rarely unleashing his 137mph serve, slow round the court, prone to unforced errors, with the principal grass-court tournament round the corner, Tsonga looked horribly undercooked. Which was odd in conditions so hot you could have fried an egg on the courtside Tarmac. Perhaps a man schooled in Monte Carlo was simply undermined by the oddity of playing in 33 degrees in Hammersmith.
“Sometimes you cannot do anything, because the guy in front of you is playing well and he’s doing
the right things to make you play in a bad way,” the Frenchman said.
For those watching in disbelief as yet another seed self-destructed, one question was paramount: what did this mean for Wimbledon? Tsonga, for one, did not believe the mass exodus of favourites here provided any proper portent for challenges ahead. Whatever the reasons might be for serial underperformance – the heat, the court surface, the fact they wanted to watch the horse they had backed run in the 3.15 at Ascot – he did not foresee any such issues arising at the All England Club.
“The favourites are still the favourites,” he said. “You have seen these kind of things happen so many times before, and at the end it’s still all the time the same guys.”
That may well happen. But here Murray senior was required to produce a double-act defence of the natural order. In truth, he was not altogether alone. Tomas Berdych, the fifth seed, beat the Canadian Denis Shapovalov 7-6, 6-7, 7-5. And, despite being unwisely decked out entirely in Johnny Cash black, the Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov, the sixth seed, saw off the Frenchman Julien Benneteau 4-6, 6-3, 6-4.