Andy Murray surprisingly struggles against Julien Benneteau

Video Clips: First set | Second set | Third set

It was supposed to be a straightforward match on paper, but somehow Andy Murray's match against Julien Benneteau in the quarter-finals of Cincinnati turned into a dramatic contest that was reminiscent of Murray's match against Del Potro in last week's Montreal final. It was yet another case of Murray outlasting one of his opponents, and a showcase of Murray's fighting abilities.

He didn't play his best tennis, but he kept spurring himself on, like a nagging inner voice in his head and in the end, it paid off. It's almost like Murray needs to be disgusted with himself before he can push himself to do better things.

I like the mindset that Benneteau took in this match, not flustered or trying too hard to make things happen. I've heard commentators say that you have to red line your game against the top players, but Benneteau played within himself, comfortable in his own shoes and not intimidated by the occasion. Sometimes it's better to feel your opponents out and see what they have to offer. This is where it's Murray's job to quickly show why he's ranked where he is, and he didn't do that.

In fact, he did the complete opposite. It looked like a clear case of Murray underestimating his opponent. The more Murray has improved his fitness, the more he gets away with daring his opponents to find a way through him, to find an unlikely gaping hole in his defense. It's a lazy way of playing to me, a reactive way of playing, almost like he's only trying to protect his territory, not making any attempt to make that knock-out blow on the other side of the court. This might sound like a strange suggestion, but I'd like to see him put more thought into his shot selection. He is obviously capable of doing so, but doesn't use it as a weapon as much as he should.

It wasn't a good day for Murray, and that was just as much of a reason for the loss of the first set, as his shot selection. He made some strange errors, sometimes hitting the bottom of the net on his groundstrokes which is a rare sight, and his serve was nowhere near finding its timing. It had to be confidence shattering, the manner in which Murray lost the first set shanking his serves all the way into the wrong side of the court. If he played the same way tactically as he did, but had better timing overall, he probably would have won the first set as well.

Still, Benneteau played a smart match, and I liked how calm he was as if he was playing any other match. He's been involved in many battles over the course of the week, including a three hour match against Garcia-Lopez that was physically exhausting and filled with long, competitive rallies. Maybe it's because he's become so battle-hardened with all the tennis he's played this week that he can find the tennis that works best for him without overly dwelling on it.

In a way, I think Benneteau plays an efficient game. He takes the ball early, has short backswings and he doesn't really have a lot of excessive rotation on his shots. That's what allows him to achieve good accuracy, but at the same time, generating pace doesn't really come naturally to him. He couldn't really hit the ball through Murray, but he found ways around him and he followed it up at the net when he could.

Whenever he hit an intentionally short slice, he had good results pulling Murray off the court. It's a good way of getting Murray out of position to defend the next shot, taking his foot speed out of the equation. It was a good, subtle display of variety and Benneteau showed some nice feel at the net with the drop volleys at times.

Even though Benneteau played an well-constructed game overall and the accuracy on his shots were good in terms of placement, I wasn't impressed by the depth on his shots which made his shots clearly attackable. That was the biggest weakness in his game, and Murray didn't take advantage of it.

After that horrible shanked serve at the end of the first set, Murray seemed affected mentally at the start of the second set, playing a similarly poor game to lose the second set. It was an interesting situation that I wish would have been explored more, to see how Benneteau would respond mentally in a winning position to close out the match. When it comes to closing out important matches and playing with leads, I would personally rate Benneteau as being one of the weakest. It's often strange how his groundstrokes can sometimes look completely relaxed while other times it can look completely mechanical and tight.

Instead, Murray responded quickly to the threat of losing. This was to be the game where Murray suddenly raised the effort level of his game. It's almost like Murray isn't really chasing the win, but it's because he hates losing that drives him to raise his energy levels. The reason why the 2-0 game was so important was because Benneteau also put all of his mental and physical exertions into it.

It must have been heartbreaking the way he constructed the 50+ shot rally, doing all the hard work to move Murray out of court only to miss the smash on the final shot. It was a match-changing point, and one which sped up the change of momentum into Murray's favour. I think, eventually Murray would have wormed his way into the match anyway but this point quickly changed it into a one-sided affair.

It fired up Murray in a way that allowed him to strike the ball better, and amazingly, the depth and pace on his shots naturally got better as a result of how he was feeling in this match. Suddenly his backswings seemed less lazy then they were and he was generating better racquet head speed than before. At least Benneteau continued to fight hard during the rest of the match, but he simply couldn't make any dents into the match out of fatigue.