Injury hampers Murray

Tennis: He reminds you of the leading bloke in that sweet but quirky Scottish film Gregory's Girl. A coat hanger with a mop of hair attached, his clothes baggy in places they really shouldn't be, Andy Murray is still growing.

But his hangdog demeanour and teenage physique is not to say the 19-year-old from Dunblane does not know where he is at or what direction he is going. No longer in the draw after a back injury curtailed his performance against the French teenage hope Gael Monfils, Murray must now readjust his sights and hope that the injury that forced him to call a trainer onto the Centre Court in the second set yesterday will settle before Wimbledon begins in about three weeks.

Murray is literally still growing, so his ability to build up his body and strengthen the places that need to be must be approached prudently. He does not want to become a cautionary tale.

At 6ft 2½in, he's a good height for the sport and would, if he had a choice, like to stop growing. In the case of Rafael Nadal, the man has prematurely left the boy; in Murray, the man is still trying to emerge.

That aside, the young Scot had plenty of this match, which was characterised as the best prospects from Britain and France shooting it out in the main arena at Roland Garros. While Murray dropped the first set 6-4, he came back to level in the second before sweeping Monfils aside in a 6-1 third. It was then his back began to complain loudly, and in the fourth set, the teenager said afterwards, he had thought about giving up. The door open, Monfils went on to dust down Murray 2-6, 1-6 for the match.

"I went for an X-ray when I went to a doctor in Germany at the end of last year," said the Scot. "The bottom part of my spine hasn't properly grown yet. It's not like a full bone. Today there was quite a lot of running, quite a lot of long points. I think that's why it kind of went because it's not fully grown yet."

The cold didn't help, as it was another one of those windy, 11 degree days when the first thing the players did when they left court was to remove the nugget of red dirt from the corner of their eye. But the wear and tear of consistently playing on the unforgiving clay has simply taken a toll. After this, the grass at Queens and Wimbledon will be a feather bed.

"Because the ball is bouncing really high all the time, there's a lot of lunging. It takes its toll. This is my sixth, seventh week on clay. It could have been because of that," added Murray.

Also out of the competition is the erratic Marat Safin, who fell in four sets to Fernando Gonzalez, while American Andy Roddick limped out to an ankle injury he had carried into Paris.