ForeverDelayed wrote:

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His record in mandatories still isn't brilliant with 4/13 QF's, and only Wawrinka has a worse record from top 10 players (Roddick and Nalby have also reached 4, but haven't played many of the events due to injury and not being bothered to play them) but it's definately getting better, and I'd expect him to add a US Open and Madrid QF to that as well, providing he doesn't have a bad day and lose early to someone.

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Err, too right Andy's record in manadatories is "definately getting better".  I'd say that going from one quarter final counting in his ranking total to two quarters, a semi final and a title, over the last 3 mandatories is one hell of an improvement.

The evidence is all so clearly that he is going in the right direction at the moment.

I absolutely agree that his record in mandatories over the year up to and including the French Open was very poor, and even now with 4 quarter finals or better over a full year is not great.  But, there were some mitigating factors such as after missing Paris and Wimbledon, he was hardly match fit at Canada, Cincinnati and the US Open, so there weren't just issues with Nalby and Roddick's misses     Plus, he had his best ever clay court season ( granted not a lot to beat, but again heading in the right direction )

After last year's Canada and Cincinnati Masters come off the rankings, so we are back to the traditional 13 counting, only 5 of the top 10 will have more mandatory quater finals or better, and for two of these that will be 5 against 4, just one more.  So, while as you say, not brilliant, after the top 3, Andy's mandatory quarters or better now stand up to comparison with the rest of the top 10.

I was having a look at stevegtennis.com and looking at the race points, Andy is 4th for race points won this year in mandatory events ( so effectively ranking points won so far this year ), OK miles behind the top 3, but 4th nevertheless !!  And that is 4th with a steady positive build up in success through the year.  Incidentally for optionals, he is 6th among the top 10, and 8th overall, and that is currently unaffected by the Indy zero.   He needs to work on those optionals 

It is clear that in recent months, he has really turned round the previous issue, and it was an issue, of having a comparatively poor mandatory points count as against the other other top players. He now needs to work towards getting closer to the top 3, and that is undoubtably a really major task.

Sometimes I do think you find it overwhelmingly difficult to come to terms with just how well Andy has been doing lately, and I just don't know why.

I list the race points split below, sorry it goes a bit out of line when I copy / paste.  The original is on  http://stevegtennis.com/rankings/2008/r080408.txt  so that might make it clearer.


                      ATP Race Standings For 8/4/08   

                                         Points Points Points                             
                                    Rank  This   Last  Gained  GS   MS  Other             
Rank Player                     Nat Diff  Week   Week  This Wk PTS  PTS  PTS  Trn         
---- ------                     --- ----  ----   ----  ----    ---  ---  ---  ---         
   1 Nadal, Rafael              ESP    0  1100  1055    45     490  461  149   15
   2 Djokovic, Novak            SRB    1   744   674    70     297  386   61   13
   3 Federer, Roger             SUI   -1   701   686    15     370  251   80   13
   4 Davydenko, Nikolay         RUS    0   387   386     1      46  198  143   16
   5 Murray, Andy               GBR    1   380   280   100      66  198  116   17
   6 Ferrer, David              ESP   -1   322   321     1     115   65  142   17
   7 Blake, James               USA    0   271   256    15      64  116   91   17
   8 Roddick, Andy              USA    0   255   255     0      22  106  127   14
   9 Wawrinka, Stanislas        SUI    0   251   251     0      52  119   80   16
  10 Almagro, Nicolas           ESP    0   238   241    -3      58   48  132   17
  

-- Edited by indiana at 17:45, 2008-08-05

-- Edited by indiana at 18:14, 2008-08-05

-- Edited by indiana at 10:58, 2008-08-06