Woeful Murray puts on a horror movie

On the evidence of his defeat by Mario Ancic at the Sony Ericsson Open, that is where he belongs at present.

This was an absolute shambles of a performance, one that should seriously alarm the player himself and those charged with guiding him to the kind of achievements his talent demands.

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Having played an opening set of such stunning ineptitude that it was surely among the worst of his whole career, he at least tried to fight back but could not prevent a 2-6, 6-2, 7-6 loss to the towering Croat.

The initial impact will be his ranking plummeting around 10 places from 13, having lost the points from reaching the semi-final here 12 months ago.

But that will tell less than half the story of this Saturday night horror flick in which he played the part of an angry and confused young man, totally lacking in direction and completely at odds with himself.

About the only consolation is that, at the still tender age of 20, there is plenty of time to get his act together.

He should profit from having virtually no ranking points to defend over the next six months owing to his long injury absence last year.

But he will be starting from a low ebb after a display which left him admitting to confusion about his planning and preparation.

Two specific areas of concern were his serve and the repeatedly over-ambitious use of the drop shot.

His first-serve percentage was a mere 48 per cent and he conceded that he is not sure whether he should be smacking it harder or trimming it a little and being more consistent.

His quandary was summed up when he said: "You know, I don't know. I'll have to think about it and decide what the best way to play is."

Then the persistent drop shots, which are beautiful when they come off but too often turn dominance in a rally into a lost point: "I've tried to get rid of them," he said. "I don't practise them at all."

That would explain why so many of them went awry. But it is an extraordinary state of affairs, given how many he went for. Players at the very top do not have such contradictions, nor do they throw in the sequences of giveaway points from which Ancic benefited.

This is apart from the two matchpoints Murray missed at 6-4 up in the tiebreak, the second of which was a double fault.

Earlier, having broken for 4-2 in the final set, he handed back the advantage by losing four of the next five points as follows: double fault, bizarrely miscued forehand off the frame, badly executed dropshot, double fault.

The backdrop to these technical woes were his slouching body language and inability to contain frustrations, which resulted in a constant stream of self-beration.

A few weeks ago Murray claimed his demeanour on court was much improved and his temper on the wane. On the basis of this match and his defeat by Tommy Haas in Indian Wells last week, that is hardly apparent.

Also, he simply cannot afford to get off to the kind of somnolent start he did here, like he had just stepped off the nearby beaches of Key Biscayne. The lessons of the Australian Open, when he was so slow out of the blocks against Jo Wilfried Tsonga, do not appear to have registered.

It is most unfortunate that a pattern is emerging which sees him perform best at the smaller ATP events and not the important ones, such as Australia and these nine Masters series.

Sometimes Murray looks like a little boy lost in the sea of options his talent affords him. Before heading to the claycourt tournaments this month, Judy, his mother and formidable guiding light, needs to step in and straighten a few things out.

There certainly appears to be a lack of communication between Murray and his coterie of advisers who replaced the demanding figure of Brad Gilbert after he was dispensed with last November.

With the Scot's ranking out of the top 20 for the first time since August 2006, the right messages do not seem to be getting through from the likes of Miles Maclagan, the highly-regarded young coach and hitting partner who travels with him.

Murray's next tournament is the regular ATP Tour event in Valencia starting a fortnight today. There is much thinking to be done between now and then.