Cameron Norrie’s hopes of cracking the world’s top 10 are hanging in the balance after defeat to Casper Ruud in the fourth round of the Miami Open.
The British number one now needs a number of other results to go his way in order to confirm his meteoric rise in time for next week’s updated world rankings.
Norrie, playing with heavy strapping on his left leg, was never able to reach the heights that had swept him to the quarter-finals or better in his last four tournaments.
He failed to fashion a single break-point opportunity against the Norwegian world number eight until he converted the last of three in the eighth game of the second set, preventing Ruud serving out for the match.
But by that point there was a sense of prolonging the inevitable and Ruud made no mistake at his second attempt to seal a 6-3 6-4 win in just over one-and-a-half hours.
Despite his defeat, Norrie still stands a chance of making the top 10 ahead of next week’s update, depending on later results for Jannik Sinner, Taylor Fritz and Hubert Hurkacz.
