Defending champion Andy Murray crashed out of the Wimbledon 2014 quarterfinals after losing in straight sets to young Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov. The British star admitted that he was simply outplayed by his opponent and added that he is going to work harder in order to post better results in upcoming tournaments.
Dimitrov is now guaranteed a place in the world’s top 10 for the first time next week with his run in the semifinals and will meet world number two and top-seed Novak Djokovic for a place in the final on Friday. the other semifinal will be contested by seven-time champion Roger Federer and Canada’s Milos Raonic.
“Everyone’s starting to get better,” said Murray. “The younger guys are now obviously becoming more mature and improving all the time.
“If I’m going to play better tennis than I am just now, the only way to do that is by working even harder than I have before. Getting in the gym, getting stronger, becoming physically better. Now we’ll see whether I can come back stronger and come back better. No one knows, but I’m going to try.
“When I stop thinking I have a chance of winning these tournaments I’ll stop playing tennis,” continued the Scot. “This is what I play for. I love these events. I’ve had a lot of hard losses in them in my career, but also with some big highs, as well. This is obviously one of the hard ones. But I need to gain some motivation from it.”
Murray said that he played generally well in the tournament but it was just simply a bad day against Dimitrov.
“I started the tournament well,” he said. “I was playing good tennis. Today was a bad day from my side. I made many mistakes, unforced errors, and then started going for too much and taking chances that weren’t really there. He was the better player from start to finish.
“I should have done a better job at the beginning of the match of making it tougher for him, and I didn’t manage to do that. Also, when I got back into the second set, the end of the set that was my opportunity there. He’d been up a break and I’d come back. Momentum was starting to shift a little bit. Couldn’t quite do it. The frustrating thing for me was the amount of mistakes I made today. Even when I wanted to get into longer rallies I was missing shots. I was unable to make him work as hard as I needed to, to get back into the match.”
Murray has been working with former world number one Amelie Mauresmo since the start of the grasscourt season and he hopes to still continue working with the Frenchwoman in the next few months.
“I’ve really enjoyed the last couple of weeks,” he said. “I’ve found it good fun. I found it calming. Tactically, I feel like the chats have been good. Also the direction that I would like my tennis to go in. So I hope so, but we’ll need to sit down and chat.”
