TENNIS
MURRAYS BOW OUT IN HOLLAND
Sunday Herald
By Stuart Fraser in Rotterdam
Sunday 13^th February 2011

ANDY MURRAY remains convinced that coming back to action 10 days after his grand slam final defeat in Australia was the correct course of action even though he and brother Jamie were knocked out in the semi-finals of the ABN AMRO World Tennis tournament in Rotterdam last night.

The Scottish siblings suffered a straight sets defeat 6-4, 6-4 to second seeds and Wimbledon champions Jurgen Melzer, of Austria, and German Philipp Petzschner in an entertaining 72-minute match in front of an appreciative crowd.

Andy suffered a shock first-round exit in the singles to Marcos Baghdatis on Wednesday night, but the fun that he has had playing with Jamie in the doubles over the last few days, which included an on-court penguin walk in celebration on reaching the semi-finals on Friday, makes him feel his decision to play had been vindicated.

“I want to be enjoying myself and I really enjoyed playing in the doubles with Jamie this week,” he said.  “It was good fun being around him as we don’t get the chance to play together that often.

“Obviously the singles was not good but the doubles was very good.  We had good wins against two very good teams and we lost a close match against the Wimbledon champions today.”

There may be some more good news for Andy today if top seed Robin Soderling loses to France’s Jo Wilfried-Tsonga in the singles finals as a defeat for the defending champion would see the Scot regain the world No.4 spot, which he lost last month.

Andy will head back to the UK today for a few days off before flying to Dubai for next week’s Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships, whilst Jamie heads across the Atlantic to compete in the doubles at the ATP 500 event in Memphis this week with Xavier Malisse.