Will add my post here and delete the one in the Cincy thread ..
Andy Murray v Gilles Simon. To be played Friday 19th August, time tbc
H2H is 6-1 in Andy's favour - and after todays matches Andy must surely be feeling less tired than Gilles who just finished 3hr match against Pics Ferrer.
Andy has 2 wins posted against the Frenchman already this year; both on clay 6-3, 6-3 in the R16 in MonteCarlo and a couple of weeks later in Madrid, R32, 6-4, 3-6, 6-0. 3 in a row would be rather nice and I suspect Steven might have some stats up his sleeve regarding Muzzah's record against GEM's.
Although they have played each other 7 times, oddly enough this will be their first meeting on an outdoor hard court - Muzz leads 3-1 on the devil dust, 2-0 on indoor hard and 1-0 on grass and the 2nd set of the Madrid 2011 match was the first set Gilles had taken off Andy since winning their first meeting in 2007.
Andy is on a 6-match GEM-bashing streak and since losing to Tsonga at the 2008 AO, his record against French players when he has actually got on court (i.e. ignoring the Dubai 2009 withdrawal against Gasquet) is 33-1, the loss being against Monfils at last year's Paris Masters. The last time he lost to a GEM in North America was when Gasquet beat him in the Toronto Masters semis in 2006.
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GB on a shirt, Davis Cup still gleaming, 79 years of hurt, never stopped us dreaming ... 29/11/2015 that dream came true!
Certainly on the face of it, a pretty tough tie for Andy to test how his form is on what had seemed to be becoming his "devil hard"
Simon has certainly had a good year, with a fair amount of success and climbing back up the rankings. Whether it's quite a career year, compared with say 2008 when he ended the year at WR 7, I think is debatable, but yes should certainly be quite a test of where Andy is currently at. Statswise there is nothing much different historically between Smon's ousdoor record, and on hard courts, and his indoor record, all seems much of a muchness, i.e generally pretty good across the board. But maybe the straight win / loss record hides something. These sports journalists sometimes know what they are talking about
I'll take Andy to win in straight sets, but that doesn't mean I am hugely confident and can't see this match going the other way.
-- Edited by indiana on Friday 19th of August 2011 11:48:45 AM
Andy's match is first up on Grandstand, starting at 11am local time and 4pm UK. Nice to see he's made it one step closer to the Stadium court ...........
SCHEDULE - FRIDAY, 19 AUGUST, 2011
CENTER COURT start 11:00 am [10] S Stosur (AUS) vs [4] [WC] M Sharapova (RUS) - WTA Not Before 1:00 PM [7] M Fish (USA) vs [2] R Nadal (ESP) - ATP Not Before 2:30 PM [3] R Federer (SUI) vs [8] T Berdych (CZE) - ATP Not Before 7:00 PM [1] N Djokovic (SRB) vs [6] G Monfils (FRA) - ATP [1] K Peschke (CZE) / K Srebotnik (SLO) vs N Grandin (RSA) / V Uhlirova (CZE) - WTA
GRANDSTAND start 11:00 am [10] G Simon (FRA) vs [4] A Murray (GBR) - ATP D Hantuchova (SVK) vs [2] V Zvonareva (RUS) - WTA N Petrova (RUS) vs [9] A Petkovic (GER) - WTA Not Before 7:00 PM [16] S Peng (CHN) vs [13] J Jankovic (SRB) - WTA [1] B Bryan (USA) / M Bryan (USA) vs [7] M Fyrstenberg (POL) / M Matkowski (POL) - ATP
-- Edited by daisy on Friday 19th of August 2011 07:06:10 AM
One factor which may just work in Andy's favour is that he was on court for "only" an hour & 42 minutes against Bogo, while it took Simon three hours & eight minutes to overcome Ferrer...
Great to be in touch with people again. Hope Andy is fired up today. Are we doing an FTM for this. I am still new at twitter and facebook so never entirely sure how to contact people. Easy on my blackberry as I just reply when required.
Andy needs to step it up but I'm sure he will be up for this and due to Giles' lengthy battle I'm expecting Andy to win in two tight sets. However, not totally discounting the possibility tat it could be tougher than that. Certainly hoping for a goos match from Muzzah regardless!