Andy Murray will have his first chance of 2013 to build on his epic year by winning the first Grand Slam of the year – The Australian Open.
Murray has been making good progress so far, reaching the fourth round and very much favourite to proceed past Giles Simon into the quarter final. So far, Murray has eased past the first three rounds after victories over Haase (Round1) Sousa (Round2) and Berankis (Round3) without dropping a single set. Entering the tournament ranked 3rd in the world under ATP rankings, all that stands in his way of the Australian Open semi is the 16th best in the world, Giles Simon of France.
As well as 13 rankings in Murrays favour, he is also likely to have a huge energetic advantage over his opponent Simon, not just for only having played the minimum number of sets possible to reach this stage, but also due to the exhausting length that Simon was taken too in the last round. Simon only proceeded into the fourth round tie in the early hours of Sunday morning after a lengthy just short of 5 hour tennis brawl with Gael Monfils. As a result, Simon was required to have three hours of treatment, with fans all waiting to see what type of condition the Frenchman will be in for his round 4 tie with the Scot. Giles has admitted his chances of reaching the quarters are very slim but promises to give it his all and make Murrays task as hard as possible, insisting that he won’t be given a free pass or an easy ride into the quarter final.
However, the bookmakers see otherwise and given the conditions of the match Murray is an out and out clear favourite at a huge 1/33 to win the match and priced at 9/4 to win the competition.
