After the match, Murray called Davydenko a ball machine. If so, Murray is a broken ball machine. You never know where the ball’s going or what height it will be or how hard it will be hit.

I actually braved the desert heat at Indian Wells today. It wasn’t the best idea to wear a polyester shirt with a high collar in 94F/34C degree weather but it was worth it to get a close look at the fourth round match between Andy Murray and Nikolay Davydenko. Murray is a thinker and he’s teamed up with the best tennis coach for a thinker – Brad Gilbert – and I wanted to know how they would attack Davydenko’s metronomic game. Would Murray be throwing non-stop junk at Davydenko and winning ugly? Yes he would and it worked very well.

Again and again Murray hit loopers and moonballs followed by a flat hard backhand. There were hard serves and there was even a second serve kicker for an ace. I thought he overdid it at times. Early in the match he had a break point and hit a hard return down the line followed by yet another looper. Isn’t that the time to attack? He must know what he’s doing a lot better than I do because Davydenko hit the next ball long and Murray got his break.

Murray lost his serve twice in the first set and I wondered if he’d ease up on the junk but he hit even more in the second set. Some of them went beyond moonballs, they were unprovoked lobs.

They’re a fascinating contrast these two players. Murray stands still and rocks back and forth while he waits for the serve, no unnecessary movement. Once he gets going, he’s much faster than you think he will be. He has excellent court coverage and defensive skills with those long legs and arms. You could call him Stretch if his older brother hadn’t already snatched the nickname.

Davydenko could be called Twinkletoes. He bounces around lightly whiles he’s waiting for the serve, hip hopping in the same triangular pattern then lightly dropping into a stutter step as if the bottom of his feet were tender. Davydenko has power, it’s just that it’s not his power. Last year when I saw him lose to Marat Safin here, balls were catapulting off the little guy’s racket courtesy of Safin’s strength and size.

After the match, Murray called Davydenko a ball machine. If so, Murray is a broken ball machine. You never know where the ball’s going or what height it will be or how hard it will be hit. But that’s not all he does. He still has trouble closing out sets, it took him five set points to win the first set, but now he plays the big points much better than before. He broke Davydenko to get into the first set tiebreaker and hit big serves when he needed them.

There’s one more thing and this is the reason I put him at the top of the class of the twenty and under crowd: on match point, he unleashed a 136mph/219kmh ace. Touch and power and he’s only just started to work on his conditioning. I can’t wait to see what happens when he’s fitter and stronger.

Let’s have one more look at Maria Sharapova’s loss to Vera Zvonareva and take a quick look at Andy Roddick’s match last night.

The Sharapova match had an interesting parallel to Roger Federer’s loss to Guillermo Canas. Like Canas, Zvonareva has also been a top ten player; I saw her play in the WTA Championships in Los Angeles in 2004. She had some injury problems in 2005 and dropped down but she rebounded in 2006 and it’s not shocking to see her beat Sharapova here.

One thing you certainly didn’t see in the Federer match was on court coaching – not legally anyway. In the WTA, though, it is legal and both Zvonareva and Sharapova used it during the match. As usual, I seem to be on the wrong side of this issue. I support it because it should lead to more competitive matches if players have access to mid-match coaching. Most players and and many tennis writers, including my co-writer Pat Davis, oppose it.

There’s an interesting part to the WTA coaching rules: “if a player takes a medical time out or bathroom break, the opposing player only may request her coach.” This could help curb “momentum change” injury timeouts and bathroom breaks that are rampant on tour. If the player who takes the timeout does not have access to on court coaching and her opponent does, it might make those timeouts less appealing because an opposing player can get helpful advice while the timeout take is pretending to go to the bathroom.

Roddick is just rolling along. He’s playing with the passion and confidence of the adored crowd favorite and it’s good to see. The swagger is fun to watch but I do have one comcern.

I can’t believe I’m saying this after years of complaining that Roddick had an allergy to the net, but now he might be coming in too much. He’s a big guy and not the best mover out there so he needs to approach on a very good shot. Against Richard Gasquet there were a number of times when he had to scrape the ball off his toes because he didn’t get to the net quick enough. That might be alright against Gasquet, he was too inconsistent to challenge Roddick for two sets, but it could be a problem against the better players in later rounds.