Days after taking on Amelie Mauresmo as his full-time coach, Andy Murray suffered an epic defeat at the hands of Roger Federer in front of his hometown crowd.
The 2013 Wimbledon champion won exactly one game in a 56-minute match against Federer at the ATP World Tour Finals in London on Thursday. Federer's 6-0, 6-1 victory came as more of a surprise when their head-to-head record entering the match is taken into account.
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The players had won 11 matches each.
"It has not really happened to me before like that where winning games has been an issue," Murray told BBC Sport. "I've had tough losses and heavy defeats but nothing quite like that."
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Murray won just eight points against Federer in the first set and lost the first 11 games of the match. The match came just two days after Murray seemingly had bounced back in the event with a 7-5, 6-3 win over Milos Raonic.
He had lost to Kei Nishikori in the first round of the round-robin pool portion of the event.
The victory over Raonic he credited Mauresmo with a huge assist.
"Amelie was saying, I'm pretty sure it was one of the times she made the final of the WTA year-end championships, she lost her first match 6-2 6-2 against Nadia Petrova," he said. "She obviously wasn't feeling great, then she went on to reach the final. It's nice to have those sort of discussions, having someone that's experienced having been in a tough situation after the first match.
"I obviously played better. I hit the ball a lot cleaner than I did on Sunday from the beginning of the match. So that was pleasing."
Earlier this month, Murray announced that he and Mauresmo had agreed on a long-term partnership. She became his coach before Wimbledon after Ivan Lendl left him in the spring. The pairing with Mauresmo has brought mixed results.
He scrambled to rally with enough wins to qualify for the ATP World Tour Final after dropping to No. 10 in the rankings.
But Murray finished 0-9 vs. No. 2 Federer, No. 1 Novak Djokovic and No. 3 Rafael Nadal.
After the loss Thursday, Murray talked about changes - but only to his game, so far.
"It's very frustrating, when I'm trying my best. I've never been in that position before in my whole career," Murray said. "Maybe I need to make some changes to my game, but that's the one good thing - I have time now to do that."
With Lendl, Murray won the 2012 U.S. Open and the ensuing Wimbledon. Thursday's loss showed the amount of work ahead for Murray and Mauresmo?
Do you think Amelie Mauresmo can help Andy Murray return to competing with the likes of Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal for Grand Slams in the near future? Comment below or tell us @SportsWN.
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