World No.1 Andy Murray's struggle to rediscover his form continued yesterday with another straight-sets defeat to Borna Coric at the Mutua Madrid Open.
The Croatian claimed his scalp in February at the Dubai Championships, winning 6-1 6-3 as Murray made 55 unforced errors and failed to even earn a single break point.
This match was almost as embarrassingly one-sided finishing 6-3 6-3, and it is another loss which will hurt the Scot, who now heads to Rome where he is defending champion.
Murray's form is stark contrast to at this point last year when, then the perennial number two in the rankings behind Novak Djokovic, he embarked on a phenomenal seven-month run to propel himself to the top of the rankings pile.
He could now have to repeat something like that eye-watering effort to stay there but it is clear he is still finding his way after his elbow injury.
Cutting out the unforced errors will help. The signs were there early on in the match, particularly on the forehand side, that perhaps Coric could cause Murray some problems and he drew first blood with a break of serve to lead 2-3 in the opening set.
However, a couple of forehand mistakes from Coric allowed Murray to break straight back only for the two-time Madrid winner to then lose his serve once more to fall 3-4 behind.
Coric comfortably held his serve and forced Murray to serve to stay in the set, but he could not, instead slipping to 0-40 on his serve. Murray made it back to 30-40 and an incorrect call from a line judge gave him another opportunity but Coric broke again to take a scrappy opening set.
Murray was in trouble during his first service game of the second set after two more unforced errors helped earn Coric another break point for a 2-0 lead. Murray managed to peg him back before a timely ace rescued the game.
Murray had two break points of his own in the next game but he could not take them and he was becoming increasingly irked at how the match was panning out as it reached a crucial stage at 4-3 to Coric.
His frustration boiled over in the eighth game of the second set as he lashed a backhand well wide to go 0-40 down on his own serve. Coric then came out on top in a long rally to break Murray and give himself the opportunity to serve for the match.
The world No.59 saw it out, gifted two match points following another mistake, before winning it with a drop shot which Murray could only lift over the net and wide.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here