American qualifier Donald Young stuns No. 5 Andy Murray 7-6 (4), 6-3 in the second round of Indian Wells, the first time the 21-year-old has won back-to-back matches on the ATP tour in three years.
It was the left-handed Young’s first victory over a Top 10 player in four attempts and his highest-ranked victory since he upset then No. 32 Feliciano Lopez in the second round of 2008 Indian Wells.
No. 143 Young began to improve his level early in the year after an off-season spent working with USTA coaches in Carson, California, and hitting with the likes of Sam Querrey and Mardy Fish. A former highly touted prospect and junior Grand Slam champion who has spent much of the past three years playing Challengers, Young called the win by far the biggest victory of his career.
"It's been a lot of ups and down,” said Young, who will play Tommy Robredo in the next round. "[USTA coach Leo Azevedo] sat me down and said maybe this could be the start of my second career at 21, so we will see. It means a lot. Finally now that I'm starting to work hard, it's starting to pay off. It's not where I want to be yet, but I'll take this any day of the week. I'm really excited, hopefully keep it going and not let it end here."
Young also mentioned a couple of hard fought hitting sessions with 14-times Grand Slam champion Pete Sampras as reasons for his surge. The 40-year-old Sampras won one of those.
"It was great,” he said. “He beat me in a groundstroke game. He gave me a lot of crap for it. He was talking a lot of trash. He calls me princess and he talks a lot of stuff. He says it's all in jest. It was a different side. First of all, I didn't know whether to take it serious or not. I was kind of psyched out. He still plays well. He told me he expected to see good things from me and for me to get better. I took it to heart. He calls it getting in my kitchen. He is obviously a great player. I look up to him. He's my favorite player. Amazing to be on the same court."
Murray, who suffered a disheartening straight set loss to Novak Djokovic in the final of the Australian Open, has played sparingly since then, also dropping his opening match to Marcos Baghdatis in the first round of Rotterdam.
"Most of it was not great today," said Murray. "I didn't serve particularly well, I didn't move very well. Early on in tournaments when you're not hitting the ball well, running a lot of balls down and making your opponent play, you can sometimes get the job done, but I didn't move particularly well and he hit a lot of winners."—Matthew Cronin