Murray hopes shock defeat will not affect him in the coming weeks
Britain needs top player to be in form for Davis Cup tie against the US next week
B ritain’s top player Andy Murray is keen to ensure his Dubai Duty Free Men’s Open quarter-final loss to teenager Borna Coric on Thursday will not affect his form going into a crucial Davis Cup tie next week.
Murray will be his country’s main singles player when Britain play the US for the second straight year in their World Group first round encounter at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow from March 6 to 8.
Britain stunned the Americans in San Diego in April last year. Murray will be joined by elder brother Jamie, James Ward and Dominic Inglot.
But in Dubai, he was beaten by 18-year-old Croatian Coric 6-1, 6-3 in 79 minutes. Murray hoped the after-effects of the result would wear off quickly.
“Well, I guess you have to kind of look at the next few months and see what effect it [the result] will have on me. It’s my job to obviously not allow it to affect me,” he said.
Big events
“But we have the Davis Cup eight days from now. After that, there is Indian Wells and Miami. So there are some big events, some very tough matches next weekend and, yeah, we will see what effect it will have on me.”
Murray was not sure if he needed to delve deep and analyse his last two losses — the Australian final against Novak Djokovic and Thursday’s result against Coric.
“I don’t know if it’s down to me needing to analyse the match.
“I mean, I know pretty much what happened. It’s more sort of a feeling that I had, and I definitely know that I rushed in both matches and made too many errors early in rallies, and almost kind of got stuck in how I wanted to play,” he said.
Going for too much
“I was going for too much sometimes, and then like the 30-all point in the last game, I was playing like six metres behind the baseline.
“So there was no sort of balance there. That’s something I’m going to have to figure out, when maybe I’m not hitting the ball as well as I would like.
“If you’re trying to play aggressive tennis but you’re not hitting the ball that well, you need to know how to just back off a little bit and play high percentage tennis. When that’s happened the last couple of weeks, I have not adjusted well at all.”