Andy Murray, the former Wimbledon and US Open champion who has this week risen to world number three, suffered one of the most remarkable defeats of his career when he was outplayed 6-1, 6-3 by Borna Coric, an 18-year-old Croatian who only gained entry to the main draw of the Dubai Open as a lucky loser.
Murray was a long way below his best but Coric did enough, with his consistent containing and counter-attacking and excellent focus, to become the youngest player to reach the semi-finals of the 23-year-old tournament and to justify some of the accolades which are starting to come his way.
World number one Novak Djokovic, who has practised with him a few times, called him "definitely one of the most talented players in the world right now," and Coric already has a win over Rafael Nadal, though the Spaniard was not fully fit.
Many pundits believe he will quickly rise from his current ranking of 84 into the top 20.
It was evident from the start that an upset was on the cards.
Murray served a double fault and missed with two routine backhand drives - usually his most reliable stroke - to drop serve in the third game, and never looked like breaking back.
Although Murray won the finest rally of the match, a 41-stroke mixture of brilliant patterns, he only did so with a fortunate net cord, and very soon he had dropped serve twice more.
He was worryingly below par both with his error ratio and his shot selection - it was hard to believe he would have drop-shotted into the net on game point or serve-volleyed and then not chased a lob - and his improvement in the second set was brief.
Murray double faulted twice in a long game to drop serve and go 2-4 down, and by then Coric was matching him most of the time in the tougher rallies and beginning to bristle with self-belief.
After this it was mainly a question of whether Coric could keep his head and not make bad choices. He could and he did.
"It's one of the biggest wins of my life," said a half-disbelieving Coric, who had been fortunate to survive his previous match in which he trailed 1-4 in the final set against Marcos Baghdatis, who duly retired with cramp in the tie-breaker.
"I had no game plan because he doesn't have any weak spots. I was just trying to maintain the level and stay in the rally as long as I could. I was doing good and I was also running very good. That was some of the game plan!" Coric said
"I am still struggling with the best players when they play well, and Andy was not at his best today."
Murray agreed. "I made way too many mistakes from the beginning right through to the end. I was rushing the points. It was similar to the (Gilles) Simon match in Rotterdam. But he (Coric) moved well and made a lot of balls."
Asked why he had performed so far below his best, Murray replied: "I don't know - I only came off the court one minute ago."
After a moment's reflection, he added: "I don't know exactly why that was the case, but I'm pretty sure I know how the match went, and I don't think I'm being wrong in saying that I made a lot of basic errors, especially early in the rallies, I'd say more obviously in the first set than in the second, but yeah, it wasn't good enough."
Murray also admitted that he attempted things which on other occasions he might not have done. "I tried a few different things today. I tried to serve and volley a few points, tried to move forward a little bit more with, I guess you could say, some success.
The damage may not be great. Murray's focus will move quickly to the Davis Cup tie in little more than a week's time in Glasgow, against the United States. And the two American hard court tournaments later in the month, Indian Wells and Miami, will be more significant for him.
Source: AFP
