Defence of doubles title falters for Murray in ‘tough draw’

TENNIS can be a fickle sport, especially in doubles, something Jamie Murray found out the hard way yesterday when he and Bruno Soares saw the defence of their Australian Open title come undone at the first time of asking.

The world’s top-ranked pair, who won two grand slams together in 2016, were beaten 6-3, 7-6 in the first round by some heavy hitting from Sam Querrey and Donald Young, the Americans taking the tiebreak 7-5.

It was a bitter disappointment for the top seeds, who had such a stunning season last year but Murray said they were a little unfortunate with the draw. Querrey, who was due to play brother Andy overnight, was particularly dangerous, added Jamie Murray.

“I’m sure it’s probably one of the hardest we could have got,” he said.

“They both have had good results in doubles and they’ve got big shots so it was going to be tough.

“We fought hard, we competed hard. We just couldn’t get a break in the second set and probably played a couple of bad points in the tiebreak and ended up losing it.

“That’s just the sport, isn’t it? Win one week, lose the next week … just the way it is.”

Murray and Soares will now move on to their next stop, Rio de Janeiro, followed by Acapulco before the big-money, big-points events in Indian Wells and Miami.

Their match was an example of just how tough it is to be competing for titles every week with Querrey and Young going for broke from the baseline, allied to some big serving.

“It takes a lot to be there every single match and perform,” he said. “I guess that’s what we want to aspire to. I had great results in the grand slams the last 18 months, today was obviously unfortunate but it’s tough to learn how to do that, to get to that level of consistency.”

Soares said he was sure they would bounce back with good results sooner rather than later.

“I think we’re experienced enough, we know it goes in ups and downs,” the Brazilian said. “It’s a long season. We finished No.1 last year and if you think about it we had probably five big tournaments and the rest were average.”