Murray's defeat in Rome is eclipsed by surprise Nadal exit

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Andy Murray would not have known it, but his prospects of winning the Italian Open were raised halfway through the first set of his second-round match against Stanislas Wawrinka.

Unbeknown to him, down in the far more heavily-populated end of the patched-up building site that is the Foro Italico, his prospective opponent, king of clay Rafael Nadal, was being beaten by compatriot Juan Carlos Ferrero.

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Surface tension: British number one Andy Murray has not mastered clay, and the French Open in Paris is fast approaching

Given that Nadal's winning streaks on this surface tend to last longer than Italian governments, it was quite a shock, even though the French Open champion has been suffering with a nasty blister on his right foot.

But his exit made Murray's 6-2, 7-6 defeat all the more galling, even if the British No 1 may not have been too much of a threat in this stage of his clay court development. So far in this phase of the season Murray has been able to pick only a few crumbs from the table: two wins in Monte Carlo against lesser opposition, a default victory here and three straight-sets defeats.

His confidence is brittle and, as he has admitted, he is a long way from challenging the top players on this surface. This tournament probably represented his best chance of pre-Roland Garros progress, given that conditions are quicker than at most clay court events.

But the barrel-chested Wawrinka, an improver who played solidly, saw to it that any gains remain isolated.

Known as 'Stan' — not a name you might usually associate with lawn tennis — he is a pleasingly clean ball striker and the Swiss No 2, something about which he need not feel ashamed.

He profited from some trademark Murray deficiencies to wrap up the first set with ease, the 20-year-old Scot starting slowly and being broken in the fourth game when two drop shots again provided too much margin for error.

Around the time Nadal met his end, Murray had a medical timeout to receive a thigh rub from the physio and a vitamin pill from the doctor, for what he said afterwards was merely "heavy legs".

Murray did not use this as an excuse, but you wonder how matches can be stopped for such things when it was hardly an ambulance job.

The other delays were caused by unruly crowd movements, joke stewarding and a cacophony of noises off, from excited children to the public address system at the Stadio Olimpico next door, where Lazio were playing in the Italian Cup.

In days gone by here, it was known for linesmen to eat ice creams during play, and in some ways that anarchic spirit lives on. After losing the first set through a double fault, Murray played more purposefully and broke in the next game.

The clinching point was a successful drop shot, but the same ploy was responsible for him losing the break point he faced at 4-3 up. Murray has not forgotten how to fight and saved four match points in his next service game, but the tiebreak was lost 7-5 from 4-3 up, thanks to a smattering of poorly-executed groundstrokes, contributing to his tally of 37 unforced errors.

He said: "I didn't come into this part of the season with the expectation of winning these tournaments. Stan is a very good clay court player and I wasn't outclassed. I didn't play too well in the first but had my chances in the second and didn't take them."

He moves on to the next Masters Series, in Hamburg next week, where he damaged his wrist a year ago.

Murray will celebrate his 21st birthday there if he survives in the tournament long enough, and may reflect on a 12-month period that has not been straightforward.

Whether Nadal will be with him in Germany is doubtful. It was where he last lost a clay court match — to Roger Federer in the 2007 final — as part of an incredible sequence that had seen him win 103 out of 104 rubbers on the surface prior to yesterday.

Tennis's muscle-bound Duracell bunny could not really blame his body for complaining about what he puts it through.

In the past month he has won the Masters Series event in Miami and gone straight to Germany to represent his country in the Davis Cup quarter-final against Germany, which they won.

Then he quickly switched to clay and immediately started building on his astonishing record on the surface by winning the Monte Carlo Open.

From there he went to Barcelona and won the ATP title there before racing over to Italy. It would be tempting to say his feet do not touch the ground, were it not for the evidence of the offending blister.

Ferrero is a class act among the legions of Spanish players, good enough to have won the French Open in 2003 and sufficiently useful even on grass to have caused Federer a few problems at last summer's Wimbledon.

Federer might be thankful that, for once, Nadal is not in control of everything heading into Roland Garros.

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