Andy Murray was probably happy for the heat wave in the US.  Last year, it was a bit cool, so Murray decided to take a wildcard to Los Angeles, reached the finals, but lost to Sam Querrey.  Nonetheless, Murray went to defend his title at Toronto.  He lost to Fish (for a third time) in Cincinnati and didn’t fare that well at the US Open.  With the heat, he was able to stay in Miami and go through his training regimen, working on fitness and movement.  Murray generally does OK with rest.  Some players, like Nadal, struggle a little with long breaks.

Andy Murray was to face tall Kevin Anderson.  Anderson is a bit like a poor man’s John Isner.  He doesn’t serve as big as Isner, but he does serve big.  He moves a bit better than Isner.  Both are very tall.  Both went through the US college tennis system.  Isner played for Georgia.  Anderson played for Illinois.

When Murray isn’t playing the big guns, he tends to play more passively.  He doesn’t try to take command of a point.  Instead, he uses his speed to chase down shots.  In such situations, most players try to play aggressive, which is what Anderson tried to do.  Play aggressive shots, get to the net.  It didn’t help that Murray was not striking the ball very well.  The two would get into short rallies and Murray would leave the ball a bit long or dump it into the net.

Murray had chances to break Anderson early in the second set, but squandered the break opportunities.  Worse still, he went down a second break.  Again, he had chances on the Anderson serve, but Anderson held again.  Again, with sloppy play, Murray sacrificed his serve one more time.  In a little over an hour, Murray, the number 4 seed lost.

Since he is defending champ, he will drop nearly 1000 points for this loss.  As it turns out, both Soderling and Ferrer are also not playing Montreal, but they didn’t do particularly well last year, so they won’t lose too many points.  However, Murray has a 2000 point cushion, so while he will move 1000 point closer to these players, he still has 1000 points to spare.  The one person who can gain some solace in this is Roger Federer who has a fair number of points to defend as well.  With Murray out, Federer can afford to play poorly, and still retain his number 3 spot.  He would like to catch up to Nadal, but Nadal would have to be even flatter than Murray, and while Nadal sometimes plays slowly after a break, he’s usually not horrible.

In a way, it’s too bad for Murray because his draw is relatively nice.  In the next round, he would face the winner of Wawrinka-Russell.  He did lose to Wawrinka in the US Open, however, in the third round.  He blamed being a little bit less than fit on his poor US Open results, so he may be taking his chances, and trying to play less.  He probably didn’t expect to play only a single round before bowing out however.

Murray has been on a new diet since Queen’s.  It’s not the gluten-free diet that Djokovic was on, but it seems to have helped with his sleep.  He complained that he would still be tired after ten hours sleep, but now feels fine after 8 hours.  Murray will have to look back at his French Open prep where he turned two bad performances at Indian Wells and Miami into very nice performances heading into the French and his best French Open.  Murray hasn’t played well in the US Open since his big breakthrough in 2008 when he reached the finals.  He may have done well that year because he lost so early at the Olympics (losing to Yen-Hsun Lu in the opening round) while players like Djokovic, Nadal got very deep into the tournament.

Earlier in the day, Richard Gasquet mowed over his opponent, Florian Mayer.  However, his compatriot, Gilles Simon struggled with his game which is normally rather steady.  The story was somewhat like Murray-Anderson.  Philipp Petzschner played aggressive tennis and Simon was just off his game.

Michael Russell had a nice match upsetting clay court specialist, Albert Montanes.  In the battle of two players that gave Fed trouble in Slams, Janko Tipsarevic easily handled Alejandro Falla.  Llodra and Youzhny are in a tight match.  Michael Yani, an American journeyman, is up a break against Serb number 2, Viktor Troicki, but it is early in the first set.