STUART FRASER

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TENNIS
BLOW FOR MURRAY’S AUSTRALIAN OPEN HOPES
Freelance Article
By Stuart Fraser
Tuesday 1^st December 2009

ANDY MURRAY’S grand slam title hopes at January’s Australian Open have been dealt a blow by his early exit in London last week.

The Scot narrowly missed out on qualifying for the semi-finals of the ATP World Tour Finals by a single game and is now set to be seeded fifth in Melbourne next month.

This means that he will now likely have to beat three of the world’s top four in a row, presuming results in Melbourne go according to seeding, if he is to win his first grand slam down under.

Although Murray clinched the year end No.4 spot in yesterday’s world rankings, he is set to drop down to No.5 on January 11 when he loses the 250 ranking points he earned for winning the Qatar Open in Doha earlier this year.

The 22-year-old has chosen not to defend that title next month in favour of playing in the Hopman Cup exhibition event in Perth, Australia which offers no ranking points.

This means US Open Champion Juan Martin Del Potro will overtake Murray in the rankings ahead of the Australian Open by only five ranking points.

As well as the Argentine, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic are some of the other players Murray can expect to face if he makes the latter stages of the first grand slam of 2010.

Murray has never made it past the fourth round in Melbourne, having been on the wrong end of five-set defeats in the last 16 by Fernando Verdasco last January and Nadal in 2007.