Is Murray Ready For a Grand Slam?

For a year now, Murray has been ready to win a Grand Slam. It is easy to recall the excitement following his run to the final of last year's US Open, and the variety of articles announcing him as the next big thing in tennis. Unfortunately, however, Murray has continued to go through long periods of being told by every tennis legend still alive that he is ready to win a Grand Slam, interspersed with occasionally, you guessed it, losing a Grand Slam. To say losing, though, perhaps doesn't quite do him justice.

 

It is fair to say that this year on the ATP, there have been six players who have been a constant force at the top of the game. Admittedly there are others who have had good results in an occasional tournament, such as Verdasco's remarkable run in the Australian Open, but only the top six have had a constant impact. They are, of course, Federer, Nadal, Murray, Djokovic, Del Potro and Roddick. Now, it occured to me that it could be revealing to look at how much these players support themselves with Grand Slam tournaments, and I got the following results:

 

Federer - Two slams, two finals, 6400 points.

Nadal - One slam, a fourth round, didn't play Wimbledon, a semi final - 2900 points.

Murray - Two fourth rounds, a quarter final, a semi final - 1440 points

Djokovic - 2 quarter finals, a second found, a semi final - 1530 points

Del Potro - a quarter final, a semi final, a second round, a Slam - 3125 points

Roddick - a semi final, a fourth round, a runner up, a third round - 2190 points

 

We can see from this that Murray doesn't just lose grand slams in the way Soderling 'lost' the French Open - when Murray loses, he means business. With 1440 points, he has the worst Grand Slam results of any player from the top six, and has only half the points he would have if he could manage just to reach his seeded position every time. For the third ranked player, this isn't fantastic.

 

Furthermore, it's difficult even to make excuses for him. In the Australian Open, Verdasco was amazing. In the French Open, he was on his least favourite surface, playing a clay courter. At Wimbledon, we were seeing the Roddick who won the US Open. The US is the only one where Murray played badly, the rest of them were down to his opponent simply playing too well. As I said, though, no excuses - if Murray wants to win a Grand Slam, one day it's going to have to be him who is playing above and beyond, and he's going to need to learn to beat players lower ranked than him in the tournaments where it matters most. Perhaps to lose to verdasco in Australia and then to come runner up at Wimbledon would be more reasonable, but to lose as consistently as Murray doesn't appear to be coincidence.

 

So, to get back to the original question, is Murray ready to win a Grand Slam? To look at his statistics outside of the top tournaments, it takes something special to beat him on hard courts. But to look at the Grand Slams, it's easy to see that there is something wrong that Murray will have to fix before he is going to make it at the highest level.

 

Oh, and congratulations to Nadal on not entering one Slam and going out in the fourth round in another, and still coming third in the Grand Slam rankings :)