Furious Andy Murray smashes racket in epic meltdown after falling to heartbreaking defeat in Paris Masters
FURIOUS Andy Murray smashed his racket after another heartbreaking defeat to Alex De Minaur.
The battling Brit, 36, fell to his latest agonising marathon defeat – and a sixth from six against the Australian roadrunner.
He let his frustrations out after letting a 5-2 double-break third-set lead go and wasting match point by obliterating his frame into the court.
And that prompted boos from the Paris Masters tennis crowd in Bercy.
Murray was looking to end his nightmare run – both against De Minaur and on the ATP Tour.
The former world No1 endured a painful defeat to De Minuar in Beijing at the end of September, breaking his racket in anger.
That was one of his four defeats in his last five matches going into the final Masters 1000 event of the season.
Murray beat Yannick Hanfmann in a battle in Basel but lost his second-round clash with Tomas Martin Etcheverry, launching his racket into the court in frustration.
But he looked all set to end his curse against the ‘Demon’ on the eve of Halloween.
After seeing three set points come and go in the opener, Murray lost the first set on a tie-break.
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But he battled back in typical fashion with a 6-4 second set and was in total control of the decider, leading 5-2 with two breaks.
However, the world No13 Australian – the boyfriend of Katie Boulter – broke back and held for 5-4.
Then Murray boomed a needless forehand long on match point as he tightened up and De Minaur came up trumps when it mattered.
De Minaur broke again to level the third set at 5-5 before holding and securing a fifth game in a row to seal victory after three hours on court.
And after a backfoot forehand clipped the tape of the net and bounced back on his own side, Murray’s rage boiled over.
He whacked his orange Head racket into the middle of the hard court, shattering it into a mangled mess before shaking hands with his bogeyman.
Murray’s pain was clear to see as he battered the racket further by his chair and then hit his water bottles on to the floor.
As he did so, though, the 15,000-seater Accor Arena burst into jeers to slam the Brit’s fuming but understandable behaviour.
Should Murray have secured victory, it would have been his best win by ranking this year.
Instead, De Minaur, 24, became the first person ever to beat Murray on clay, grass, outdoor hard and indoor hard in the same season following successes at Monte Carlo, Queen’s and Beijing.
And it means world No40 Murray has still not gone beyond round three of an ATP Tour event since reaching the Doha final in February while the last time he secured back-to-back victories was in early August.