Murray to become no.3 if he wins Toronto Masters

Murray more than likely to overtake Rafa if he wins Toronto masters, which in my view is well in his grasp and his tournament to lose with the pull-out of Fed and Rafa with Tsonga and Del-Potro out and Berdych and Djoko looking out of sorts Andy has a real good chance to move up the rankings which looked unlikely a month ago.

I see bigger things ahead for Andy Murray.

Would be very happy if it happened but there is a lot of tennis between now and then. Just happy he won one match, he must be very tired and pretty jet lagged.

Hope you are getting to see some decent matches - even if they are not Fedal.

Am I right in thinking though if he does win in Toronto, he would then have to win in Cincinatti as well to maintain that ranking as he is defending champion and even if Nadal doesn't play he was knocked out early by Fish last year and won't lose many points?

Ryan

I looked at the points after Wimbledon, and that looked to be the case - Nadal loses only something like 90 this week and 180 next, while Andy is defending the same as Rafa this week (so a win would put him ahead of Nadal's points), but 1000 from Cinci. I haven't checked,but I think it gets close if Raga skips Cinci and Andy loses the final - I think Rafa goes back ahead but only by <200 points.

To be honest moving up to No.3 doesn't make a huge difference in any case to seedings draws etc. It would be a boost in confidence and a bit of kudos but ostencibly doesn't change much.

I think LF said on one of the Olympic topics that a more realistic goal is End of Season Number 3 and I'd be inclined to agree with that.

As things stand, at least Murray will not be in the same half of the draw as Rafa at the USO. Considering just how many times he's lost to Nadal in GS matches, that's pretty significant.
The ideal for him would be to get Fed in his half and beat him and have Rafa and Nole slog out a wearying other semi. If Rafa and Nole are in the same half of the draw, one of them is bound to lose quite a few points, of course.

sirfredperry wrote:As things stand, at least Murray will not be in the same half of the draw as Rafa at the USO. Considering just how many times he's lost to Nadal in GS matches, that's pretty significant.
The ideal for him would be to get Fed in his half and beat him and have Rafa and Nole slog out a wearying other semi. If Rafa and Nole are in the same half of the draw, one of them is bound to lose quite a few points, of course.

Murray to get to number three IF Nadal is injured, Murray to get to a slam final IF he doesn't have to play a member of the top three, Murray to win a slam IF the other finalist has had the more difficult draw. Anything can happen but these are not things that I as a tennis fan hope for. I want to see the best against the best with no "ifs" involved.

hawkeye wrote:I want to see the best against the best with no "ifs" involved.

Yeah, but Borg retired, so he never got to beat Rafa

Seriously, if a draw opens up for any player, it's because the other players they were 'supposed' to play weren't good enough to win their previous matches. When a player gets injured, that's all part of sport. Tennis is littered with slams where a potential winner was injured or coming back from injury or just didn't play for whatever reason - that doesn't lessen the achievement of the eventual winner. If it did, I could probably find a reason to put an asterisk next to 90% of Open era slams.
If you win a slam, you are, by definition, the 'best' for that tournament - and that's all that really matters.

Speaking of "IFs"...its not certain Nadal will even play Cincy yet. Missing Rogers isnt a big deal as he lost to Dodig early last year...but even with Cincy he only got to the 1/4s. So he's only defending 190pts between both events. Murray does have more points to defend than him pre-USO (1010pts) but then the field is lighter this week so it may be nip and tuck for the seedings for heading into USO. But Murray's big week is this one, he only got 10pts like year in Canada so if he wins big i.e. 1000pts then he will overtake Nadal.

Olympics, Toronto, Cincinatti and US Open?

That is a massive ask for Murray. IF he managed that, I could see his season ending at the US Open and missing the Asian swing where he has points to defend if he managed the above.

It's all good improving ranking, but it does come at a cost.

JH Marx. Quite agree with your sentiments about GS winners. To add to that, you could argue that Djoko's efforts to win four out of five slams from Jan 2011 to Jan 2012 was particularly noteworthy.
Rafa may have been slightly crocked by the end of the AO in '11, but Nole had, most of the time, to beat two of the other top four guys to get past thwe winning post.
But just as it's unfair to put an imaginary asterisk next to a winner who "only" won cos someone was injured or someone did a Rosol and knocked a big name out, then there are no asterisks next to the winners who beat the best of the rest.

He's been there before so nothing new or amazing about being number 3. Hopefully the bigger things you see involve the US open title.

legendkillarV2 wrote:Olympics, Toronto, Cincinatti and US Open?

That is a massive ask for Murray. IF he managed that, I could see his season ending at the US Open and missing the Asian swing where he has points to defend if he managed the above.

It's all good improving ranking, but it does come at a cost.

Murray will have a serious go in Toronto, might relax a bit in Cinci or call it off and then focus back on USO, seriously he can't let this Toronto masters go off considering many top players are missing and lost already.