In spite of the rather bumpy road each man has had to navigate along the way, our top two seeds, world's number four Andy Murray and rising young American Sam Querrey, are set to square off in the Los Angeles final today. Querrey has looked less than convincing, to say the least, reaching the final through back-to-back nail-biting comeback victories over Arnaud Clement and Janko Tipsarevic, while Murray has been wildly erratic, alternating between patches of awe-inspiring play and lackadaisical ball-spraying. Nevertheless, I am optimistic that both men will summon up their utmost effort to deliver an engaging final this afternoon.
Murray is considerably higher ranked, has a far more impressive collection of victories under his belt, and has soundly defeated Querrey in all four of their previous career encounters, including one scarcely a month ago at Wimbledon. However, it may be pointed out that Murray's results this season outside the Grand Slam events have been positively abysmal by his standards, while Querrey has had tremendous success therein, accumulating three year-to-date titles. Moreover, this match will be played not only in Querrey's home country, but in his home state, where the crowd support he receives is tremendous (as exemplified by the "Samurai" pictured above), and he will enter the match as defending champion.
All things considered, then, I must give Querrey a legitimate chance at pulling the upset, but will lean towards a Murray victory in three sets.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thoughtful discourse welcome!