Doubles troubles for weary Murray following early exit

It has been a long season and Jamie Murray has all but had enough. "I'm ready to stop for the year," the 22-year-old Scot said here yesterday after partnering his brother Andy in a 6-4, 6-3 defeat by Arnaud Clement and Michael Llodra in the Madrid Masters. "The last couple of months have been quite hard. I've not won a whole lot of matches."

After his breakthrough first season Murray's prospects looked good when Max Mirnyi, one of the world's leading doubles players, agreed to become his partner this year. Despite early success, however, the pair never gelled and split last month. Murray has since played four matches with four different partners and lost them all, though he is still No 33 in the world doubles rankings, three places higher than at the start of the year.

He is looking for a new partner, but after several leading doubles players formed new teams this year there are not many specialists on the market. "I'm not too sure what I'm going to do," Murray said. "I'd be surprised if I found someone I wanted to play with for the whole year. I'd be than happy to find someone to play Australia with in January and take it from there."

From next week Murray is due to team up temporarily with Sweden's Robbie Lindtsedt, but he would clearly prefer to spend time with his feet up in his new flat in Wimbledon. Since the start of the year he has spent 34 out of 41 weeks on the road, playing in 16 different countries. "I was playing quite well up until the Olympics and since then it's been a bit of a battle," Murray said. "But I think for my second year it's not too bad. For the age I'm at, to have played for a year and stuck at the same level is not too bad."

The Murrays took only four games off Clement and Llodra in the second round at the Olympics and performed much better here, but the French are an established pair and their understanding showed. There were only two breaks of serve and the Murrays forced just one break point.

In the singles Andy today faces Italy's Simone Bolelli for the first time after the world No 43 beat Spain's Nicolas Almagro, the world No 17, 7-6, 6-1. "He has good ground strokes and a decent serve ," Murray said of Bolelli. "I haven't played for a few weeks and the last matches were on grass [in the Davis Cup] so I have to have realistic expectations about the next week. I'll just try and get back into a rhythm."