Takes place on either Monday or Tuesday.

Preview:

Andy gets his chance for revenge over Italian clay-court specialist and world no 38 Fillippo Volandri.

Last year they met in round 1 of the Masters series event in Rome and Volandri defeated a below-par Murray quite comfortably, 6-4, 6-4. That day Murray played too passively and an error-strewn performance meant he was never really in contention.

However, since then Murray has reached the last 16 of two grand slams, a Masters series semi-final and an ATP final aswell as beating the likes of Roger Federer and Ivan Ljubicic.

Volandri plays most of his tournaments on clay, in 2006 he reached 3 finals and 2 semis on the red dirt. However, on faster surfaces he's nothing like the same player, indeed last autumn he lost in rd2 of a challenger to Ukraine's Oleksandr Dolgopolov in straight sets, a player ranked outside the world's top 250.

The courts in Doha, are medium paced and high bouncing so they suit Volandri's game pretty well. In 2006 he reached the semis, beating Davydenko in straight sets along the way.

Volandri has a solid but unspectacular serve, his game is based on taking the ball early and making good use of the angles to move his opponent round the court and open things up to hit the big forehand. His topspin forehand is his main weapon, in Rome, it's depth and pace caused Andy a lot of problems.

It's a tricky opening match but I reckon Andy will come through something like 7-5, 6-3.

-- Edited by ultimateshedman at 22:03, 2006-12-30