Slumpy In Da House

So we all knew that Andy Murray isn't the greatest claycourter ever in the history of claycourts. No one really rates his chances of winning Roland Garros too highly - let's just say that the odds of it being his first Slam are not high.

But when you combine this slump he's in at the moment - and yes, I think it's genuinely a slump now - with the clay, then you have a lethal cocktail for the Muzz. He's playing worse than he's played in a long, long time, and now he has to do it on his worst surface too. That is not good.

I had thought that perhaps the change of surface might be a good thing for Andy - he might be able to put that black memory of the Australian Open final behind him and start fresh, the hardcourts over for a few months, out of sight, out of mind. But it looks like it's gone the other way - the red stuff has exacerbated all the worst points of his clay game and made it genuinely dreadful.

Let's be fair - he's played only one match on the stuff this season, so it might be a little early to make sweeping generalisations. But that one match was pretty telling. It's not that he lost it so much as the way he lost it - this was no pipped-to-the-post-in-a-third-set-breaker. This was a solid two hoof beatdown. Philipp Kohlschreiber made Murray look ridiculous - and that's not something Kohli does a lot. He's a good player and a very dangerous one, but he's not the type of dude that regularly just blasts people off the court.

So I'd be watching out if I were Andy Murray. This is danger country. He needs to find his feet of clay, because here be dragons (and raging bulls).