The pressure is now hotting up on Murray
ANDY MURRAY will head into what is now the key part of his season with a relatively modest 15-5 record after his defeat in the semi-final of the Barcelona Open by Dominic Thiem.
Outgunned by the powerful Austrian, particularly on the forehand side, and with his serve still misfiring too often, the 29-yearold Scot could not ram home the advantage after he went an early break ahead in the deciding set.
Murray was a late entry into Barcelona and had played three hours the day before. At 4-5 and 30-30, he hit an easy forehand wildly long and then was lobbed on the subsequent match point — Thiem winning 6-2, 3-6, 6-4.
While there is no need for undue alarm after something of a stop-start year due to illness and injury, the pressure on defending his No 1 world ranking is about to begin in earnest.
Murray overcame a slow start, which, at one stage looked set to condemn him to a swift defeat, to drag himself back into the contest.
But, overall, Thiem proved too strong as he clinched victory in two hours and 15 minutes.
A day after needing a final-set tie-break to see off Albert RamosVinolas in just shy of three hours, the Scot again endured another gruelling work-out.
He was outclassed in the first set, but dug in during the second as he grew into the contest and levelled the match with a break of serve.
He was a break up and then down by one in the third, but fourth seed Thiem prevailed to claim his third British scalp of the week after knocking out Kyle Edmund and Dan Evans.
This was the Austrian’s first win over Murray in three attempts, but both of their previous two contests had gone to three sets and this was another gruelling scrap.
‘In the first set, I didn’t have many chances but I started to play better in the second,’ said Murray.
‘It was quite windy out there and difficult to get into a rhythm. He started to hit the ball pretty hard and was pushing me back.
‘When conditions are like that, it’s important to be the one dictating the points. I started to do a better job of that. However, in the last game I missed a couple of shots I shouldn’t have.’
Meanwhile, Maria Sharapova’s hopes of playing at the French Open and Wimbledon were given a juddering shake last night when her comeback run was ended in Stuttgart by one of her harshest critics.
Kristina Mladenovic exposed the Russian’s lack of match play to win their Porsche Grand Prix semi-final 3-6 ,7-5, 6-4 with a spirited revival that had been beyond her peers this week.
Sharapova’s hopes of playing at Roland Garros now lie entirely in the hands of the French Tennis Federation and its new and somewhat unpredictable President, Bernard Giudicelli.
The 180 ranking points she has amassed here are not enough to get her into Paris, so she will have to rely on a wildcard invitation, with the decision not being made until May 16. A potential and quite likely compromise option would be to allow her to play in the qualifying event.
As far as Wimbledon is concerned, she still has a very good chance of making the qualifying tournament at Roehampton under her own steam, as she will play two more tournaments — the points-rich Madrid and Italian Opens — before the SW19 entry ‘cutoff’ date.
BRITISH No 4 Aljax Bedene reached today’s Hungarian Open final after a 6-2, 6-4 win over Serbia’s Laslo Djere. Bedene will face top seed Lucas Pouille, the world No 17, in the clay court final in Budapest.