The seeds are having a pretty torrid time of it down on the Mediterranean coast this week:  Fognini's just seen off Marin Cilic (14) by 2 & 0, so he's Andy's opponent in the third round!    Andy had better watch out, too:  he & Fognini have met only once before, in the last 32 of the Canadian Masters two years ago, when we were already expecting bigger & better things of him & Fognini, a contemporary, was even less well known than he is now, yet he was thumped 2 & 2!  OK, so Andy's a much better & stronger player now & should win, possibly in three, but even so...

I've merged the two threads together and deleted SC's and Kundalini's posts to avoid confusion because they were then out of place. Hope that's OK.

Anyway the last time these two played Andy couldn't trust himself to use topspin on his shots because of his wrist the history between them is irrelevant.

Didn't see the Fognini/Cilic match, but I'd be surprised if the result wasn't down to a horror show from Cilic rather than anything the Italian did.

Murray should win this as Fognini isn't the kind of player he should be losing to on clay, and will allow him to reach a quarter final on clay for the first time - he won't be getting any further than that though with either Nalbandian or Davydenko as the opponent.

Oh Madeline that was so terrible I'm slightly concerned that Steven has hacked into your account.

I have to confess to hoping that Cilic would be Murray's next opponent based purely on the expectation that he'd be easier to beat on the red stuff. I hadn't remembered Andy's last meeting with Fogninni but as wolf said the injury (not to mention that it was two years ago) makes that result irrelevant.

This will be a tougher match than the first, but it is a round later so you kinda expect that and I don't think it is by any means impossible.  I guess we'll see tomorrow :)

steven wrote:

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I've given up my job as resident pun artist. When there are virtuoso comedians like VdB around, how can I compete?

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Im being serious, atp match fixing and blood doping are very serious problems in the current climate(and i dont mean the credit crunch), and should not be made into puns!

 

Looking at the forecast for the rest of the day and the fact that Andy is scheduled to be last on court, I'd be surprised if he got to play at all today. The weather looks quite damp at times for the rest of the week, so this is going to be a real pain for the organisers.

The site is saying that play will now start at 15.00 local time, so 14.00 BST.  Doubt Andy will get on court today, though.