Jan 19, 2007 – Hello from the Australian Open,

I haven’t heard from several of you yet, so please let me know you are getting these and how you are doing!

See the recent USA Today article posted at the top of my site at http://www.JohnFMurray.com in which Vince and I talk with Douglas Robson about the psychology of the James Blake vs. Carlos Moya match-up in which they must play each other twice in a row.

As for Vince, good news and bad news. The good news is that he won his first round doubles match – paired with Jan Hernych – in three sets. It was a gritty and impressive win. He also won his first round singles match over Igor Andreev, the first win he has had at the Australian Open in 8 years!! FYI: Andreev beat Vince in 2004, the only other time they played during Vince’s best season on tour, and Andreev
beat Andy Roddick last year at the Indian Wells Masters Series. This was a breakthrough for Vince.

The bad news is that he fell ill before his second round singles match and still almost beat one of the top seeds, Dominik Hrbaty, on 50% energy. He won the first set and was up in both the second and third sets before running out of steam on one of the hottest days recorded in Australian Open history. While there are never any excuses for losing, you are now one of the few people in the world who now know that Vince came down with a virus a couple days ago, and his performance showed it. He appeared very exhausted midway through the match, and this is not like Vince who has worked to get in the best physical shape of his career. Hrbaty is known as a machine who can run forever, so it was a bad match-up as Vince’s shot making

skills were not enough against this top player while he was sick and in tennis desert warfare.