Murray clipped at semi's by Nadal, again

Another grand slam, and another postscript on Murray's hopes of winning a big one. Only a British player could have a year where he reached three grand slam semi-finals and one finals, and it gets labelled a disappointment.

More annoying than his four set loss to Rafael Nadal late on Saturday night was the constant stream of bogus analysis coming out of the sky sports commentary box. Murray's performances seem to engender over-analysis, not from print journalists, led by the Guardian's Kevin Mitchell, who keeps things blessedly simple. But broadcasters seem to go mad, diving into detailed discussion about the Scot's gameplan. They also seemed to think that Murray's encounter with John Isner, 24 hours earlier, had sapped his stamina as if his fitness has been in question for the past three years.

And then the lengthy expositions about his body language. Give it a rest, that is getting old.

Boil the defeat down to two things, Murray made too many errors and did not serve well enough. Meanwhile excellent service by Nadal nullified his usually excellent service returning. Perhaps Nadal realises that the trick with serving to Murray is to rely on placement rather than speed.

His revival in the third set was more down to a combination of luck and a Nadal blip than a shakeup in gameplan as those behind the microphones suggested. Perhaps the Spaniard threw him a pity set if there is such a thing.

Hopefully Murray will take the three loses to Nadal in three consecutive grand slam finals as a wakeup call. His tennis still needs work. He needs to learn how to shutdown his service games against the best. The problem with Murray when he plays Nadal is he never gets deep enough into a set before falling behind. Nadal is a genius and there is no easy way to beat him, but if you get to 6-6 you can fluke the odd tie-break.

In his seven grand slam matches against Nadal (record 2-5), only four sets have gone to tiebreaks, and Murray has won half of them, both in the matches that he won. In the months leading up to the Australian Open, only four and a bit months away, he needs to work on his second serve and beef up his first serve percentage.

Ah, screw it, I'm just going to watch the Murray-Gasquet match from 2008 and forget the last three years actually happened.