Friday, 4 April, 2008

British number one Andy Murray admitted his serve let him down after he was knocked out of the Sony Ericsson Open in Miami by Mario Ancic.

Murray, seeded 13th, fought back from a terrible start to take the second-round match to a deciding tie-break in a tense final set, but the 20-year-old Scot squandered an opportunity to win the match and served a double fault to lose 6-2 2-6 7-6.

"That was just a bad serve," Murray told www.atptennis.com. "It was the first time on tour that I've lost a match when I've had match points so that's pretty disappointing."

He added: "But I didn't serve well the whole match, so I probably wasn't feeling as confident as I normally would at that stage."

Murray, who defeated Ancic in the final of the Marseille Open earlier this year, was broken in his first service game and was outgunned for most of the rest of the first set.

Croatian Ancic held seven break points in total and managed to convert one more to take a healthy early advantage.

Yet Murray's response was good as he served much better in the second set and took two crucial breaks to level the contest.

The final set was more gruelling with both players dropping serve twice.

In the final-set tie-break, Ancic - serving at 4-6 - saved one match point before Murray hit a double-fault on his second match point on route to defeat.

And it was Ancic, currently ranked 63 in the world, who came out on top after almost two and a half hours on court, winning the tie-break 9/7.

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Poor service proves Murray's downfall