Andy Murray’s US Open title defence came to an end in the quarter-finals with a straight-sets defeat against Stanislas Wawrinka. The defending champion has managed to raise his game when he needs to but he was out of sorts last night as he crashed out 6-4 6-3 6-2. Wawrinka played an inspired match to hand Murray his worst Grand Slam defeat since losing to the Swiss in the third round in New York three years ago. The statistics told the story of how outplayed Murray had been – the third seed not creating a single break point and winning just 54 per cent of points on his first serve. Wawrinka moves through to a first grand slam semi-final and a rematch with Novak Djokovic, who he pushed to 12-10 in the fifth set at the Australian Open this year.
Djokovic dropped his first set of the tournament but recovered to beat Mikhail Youzhny and reach the semi-finals of a 14th consecutive grand slam. The world number one was not at his very best, as he had been in a rout of Marcel Granollers on Tuesday, but he never looked in any real danger of following Andy Murray out of the tournament. Russian Youzhny did well to take the third set before Djokovic hit back to win 6-3 6-2 3-6 6-0 and set up a last-four clash with MurrayÂ’s conqueror Stanislas Wawrinka.
