The big serve is now used to dismiss much lesser players, and sometimes it fails to do even that; the booming groundstrokes don’t have half the power they did when Andre Agassi and Andy Roddick were being ruthlessly pounded into submission just a few years ago. For now, it is the hope of a few precious points on the Challenger circuit that drives Gilles Muller on, rather than the thrill of competition on tennis’s big stage.

All that remains are faint echoes of the ear-shattering applause of those times, as even unforgettable Slam moments have been pushed right to the back of his mind.

The 25-year-old from Luxembourg admits errors of judgment forced his rankings and performance to slide away into the downward spiral that his career has become — his rank has dropped from 59 to 122 — and this trend continues.

The second seed at the $50,000 Challenger circuit saw his campaign come to an unfortunate 6-7 (5), 6-3, 6-3 end at the hands of qualifier Travis Rettenmaier of USA today.

Flashback

Despite his assertion that the past is something he doesn’t think about now as he trudges along with tennis’s non-elite, the faintest hint of a smile is discernible as he is taken back to the best moments of his career. Just when he thought it couldn’t get better than defeating his idol Agassi at the 2004 Legg Mason Classic in Washington came a first-round upset of the great American hope — Roddick — at his home Slam in 2005. There was a victory over the grasscourt avatar of Rafael Nadal sandwiched in between.

... contd.