So, another year, another Wimbledon. Andy Murray will be looking to make a real impact for the first time, not just at SW19, but at any Grand Slam in his career. He may be the current number 11 in the world and he may well have won 5 ATP titles in his comparatively short time on the tour, but the fact is, Britain's greatest and only hope of a Wimbledon win (and it's a falorn one, at that), has yet to get past the fourth round of a Grand Slam tournament.
He may still only be 21, but Murray has now been in the consistently in the world's top 20 for the last 18 months or so now, yet his Grand Slam performances have been wildly inconsistent, and this year's performances have followed a strangely familiar pattern; two tour titles have been interspersed with first and second round defeats (Murray's lost in the first or second rounds at Rome, Miami, Barcelona and Rotterdam this season). For someone who has shown the potential to not just compete with, but beat the likes of Federer, Davydenko, and Roddick, Murray's inconsistency is something that we shouldn't even have to discuss.
Whilst he has shown mesmerising form in some slams (notably the Australian Open in 2007, where Murray won 6-0 6-0 6-1 in the first round and then took Rafael Nadal to an epic five-set struggle in the fourth round, or his victory against third seed Andy Roddick at Wimbledon in 2006), the Scot has also been notable in his abject performances (Tsonga or Hyung Taik-Lee, anoyone?). It's almost become as customary as British sporting failure for the media to build up the chances of a Wimbledon win - this is only natural (how else would they generate such fever-pitch interest?) - but surely to pin our hopes on an inconsistent, albeit talented youngster, who has never gotten past the fourth round, is baffling.
I've yet to be shown that Murray can keep his head and put in seven truly great matches required to win a slam. I've yet to be shown that Murray even has the physical attributes necessary to go the two weeks distance - lets face it, he is still 21 (although that's no real excuse when you compare him to four-time French Open winner Nadal (22) and Australian Open winner Novak Djokovic (21 and just a few days younger than Andy). I hope I'm proved wrong in the next couple of weeks - grass certainly has the potential to be one of Murray's most successful surfaces - only time will tell if he has the quality and mental strength to do it.
First up is Queen's, where Murray can show us whether he's in the mood to brighten up our summers. It'll be a good test - Murray's likely path is to meet Sebastian Grosjean (a former Wimbledon finalist) in the second round, Ernests Gulbis (French Open Quarter Finalist), Andy Roddick (four-time Queens winner) in the QF. Should he get that far, he's in the same half of the draw as Rafael Nadal, so if anything is going to prove that Murray has the potential to win Wimbledon this year, it's his showing at Queen's this week.
Bring on the grass!
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