Left hamstring 'epidemic' at Basel as Murray, Tipsarevic and Fish pull out – Tennis News
World number three, Andy Murray put his dreams of four straight title wins on hold as he pulled out of the 2011 Davidoff Swiss Indoors in Basel, Switzerland on Wednesday, 2nd November prior to his first round match.
Citing a left hamstring injury, Murray pulled out of the event only hours before he was scheduled to play Dutch Robin Haase in the opening round. However, pulling out from the event due to the injury, Murray gave way to lucky loser
and local, Marco Chiudinelli and in effect a sort of free past to Haase into the second round.
Commenting on his injury, Murray said, "I woke up yesterday and was really struggling to walk. I went to a swimming pool nearby and did some exercises and it felt a little better, but I was forced to cancel my practice yesterday.
It is just a freak thing and I have no idea how I did it."
Murray, the top ranked Brit, comes fresh from a perfect swing in Asia with a hat-trick of titles winning them at Bangkok, Tokyo and Shanghai. As impressive as this feat really is, no one expected anything short of the Brit in the
absence of Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic. Federer and Djokovic had taken a break after the Davis Cup semi-final to recover for the rest of the season.
Murray’s withdrawal from the event is the fourth in a series of misfortunes at Basel. The first to pull out of Basel was the top ranked Austrian Jurgen Melzer. Citing a lower back problem, Melzer pulled out of the event on Monday
before he was scheduled to play wildcard entrant, Donald Young. Melzer was replaced by Mikhail Kukushkin. The Kazakh won over the American in simple straight sets.
Next to fall to the injury epidemic was the top ranked American Mardy Fish. Seeded fifth at the event, Fish was scheduled to open against compatriot qualifier, James Blake. However, one game into the match, Fish called for medical
assistance before retiring from the match with a pulled left hamstring.
Another addition to the benches on Wednesday was the Serbian number two, Janko Tipsarevic. Two successive finals in Russia with a title win at Moscow perhaps drained the Serb as he too cited a left hamstring injury before pulling
out of his match against Florian Mayer. Destroyed by the German in the first set, Tipsarevic trailed 1-5 in the opener before retiring from the match.
Fish and Tipsarevic’s first round retirements at Basel have put a major hit on their chances of securing a berth in the season ending Barclays ATP World Tour Finals in O2 Arena, London later in the month.
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