The two were considered the next wave of good players.  After Nadal became the first serious challenge to Federer and after Federer’s years of dominance (in the mid 2000), Novak Djokovic leaped to 3rd in the world in 2007 and mostly stayed there until 2009.  Andy Murray moved from number 6 in the world in early 2008 to number 3 in the world.

The first two Masters 1000 of the year feature surfaces that are friendly to both Djokovic and Murray.  Djokovic suffered an early loss to eventual winner, Ivan Ljubicic, in Indian Wells.  With time to rest and prepare, he suffered an even more shocking loss to Olivier Rochus.  Meanwhile, Murray lost in the quarterfinals to Robin Soderling, a respectable loss.  At the very least, Soderling was ranked in the top 10.

However, today’s 6-4 6-4 loss was more inexplicable.  Sure, Mardy Fish has a big serve.  He once reached the final of Indian Wells beating Roger Federer en route.  However, his ranking has plummeted much like James Blake.  It’s not that either are bad players, but when you’re ranked around 20 in the world which Mardy Fish used to be, you’re still vulnerable to players trying to work their way up.  Often, such players have won maybe 1 title in a year, while playing close to 20, which means it’s hard to win titles, thus hard to maintain rankings.

Because Andy Murray was defending champ, he’ll lose quite a few points, and Rafael Nadal will regain the number 3 spot.  It seems, at this juncture, no one is trying to be number 1.  Instead players are losing early and letting those who perform less poorly move pass them.

Apparently, Murray took an early break, but then, despite having a 40-0 lead, was broken back.  Just like errors have been plaguing Djokovic, so Murray seems affected by such errors.  This was a complete 180 from how Murray was playing right before the Australian Open up through the Australian Open.  Since then, he’s moped around and played indifferent tennis.

Today saw pretty much every qualifier lose.  Wawrinka beat Kevin Anderson in straight sets.  Youzhny made easy work of Giraldo, 6-0, 6-1.  Gonzalez beat Lu, 6-4, 6-4.   Juan Monaco beat Ilhan, 6-2, 7-5.

Yesterday, Ivan Ljubicic retired after losing the first set to Benjamin Becker.  This wasn’t so surprising.  A Masters 1000 title requires 7 wins for those that aren’t seeded, and it’s typically only the top players that have the stamina to make it through a Slam, and even then, they often take a few weeks off after the Slam concludes to rest.

Tipsarevic lost fairly easily to Petzschner and Soderling won his 2nd round match in straight sets over Luczak.  Cilic, Baghdatis, Melzer, and Verdasco won in straight sets (all seeded players).  Montanes, seeded 26th, lost in three sets to Serra.

So these early losses leave players like Federer, Nadal, Roddick opportunities to take the second Masters 1000 before everyone heads to Europe to play on the clay.

The bad news is the limited Miami coverage.  The first few days of coverage were non-existent (although available overseas in some countries), then FSN took the weekend coverage.  Tennis Channel, despite being called “Tennis Channel”, is clearly too embarrassed to tell its viewing public that, no, they don’t carry every tennis event.  They really should say “Tennis Channel was unable to get a bid for Miami coverage until Monday.  We regret this.  If you have access to FSN, you may watch it there”.   Of course, they just pretend nothing is wrong, and just rebroadcast old matches.

While the rest of the tournament field moves forward, Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic will have to do more re-evaluation to determine what has happened to their games.