Andy Murray news: Will he be seeded for US Open and what schedule will he play to get it?

Andy Murray suffered his earliest ever exit at Wimbledon this year as he lost to an inspired John Isner in the second round.

However, he is already talking about looking forward to the US Open, and he has a very clear plan in mind.

"I really want to try and improve my ranking to a level where I'm getting seeded in slams," he said. "That was a goal of mine sort of post-Miami.

"I've spoken to my team a lot about that, and that's something that I want to try and put my position -- put myself in a position hopefully come the US Open. If not the US Open, then going into the Australian Open next year where I'm seeded again.

So, can Andy Murray get himself seeded for the US Open and how will be going about it?

Put simply, it reduces the chances of what happened to him at Wimbledon happening again.

If Murray was seeded at Wimbledon, he wouldn't have run into a player like John Isner as early as the second round. Last year at the US Open he had a top ten player, Stefanos Tsitsipas, in the first round.

Being seeded results in kinder draws and kinder draws make it easier to climb the rankings.

As things stand, Andy Murray is only around 200 points short of the world's top 32, which is the threshold for seeding at majors.

That, I guess is the bad news. After Wimbledon, Murray will be sitting on 915 points and sat just outside the world top 50.

How, then, can he go about jumping 20 places in the ATP rankings and getting 200 points more than those currently above him in just a couple of months?

The good news for Andy Murray here is that he is not actually defending many points from last year.

He only played two tournaments in 2021 between Wimbledon and the US Open and didn't do particularly well in either.

Murray lost to Hubert Hurkacz in the round of 32 at the Cincinnati Masters and to Frances Tiafoe in the same round at Winston-Salem. That is a total of just 50 points.

Winston-Salem is the week before the US Open, so he is likely to skip that one if he can, but he is defending just five points from it anyway.

The bad news is that Murray doesn't have a huge amount of time to be able to make inroads into the world rankings.

The US Open is the culmination of what is known as the American hardcourt swing. It consists of five tournaments - four in the US and one in Canada.

Murray could make it six by getting an early start and adding the Atlanta Open at the end of July to his calendar, though.

Looking at what Murray is looking to achieve, he is likely looking at playing four tournaments before the US Open. Winston-Salam wouldn't count towards his ranking when the US Open draw is made anyway, so expect him to skip it.

We can probably expect something like this:

In terms of what he would need from those tournaments, well it's actually quite simple. Climbing the rankings always has been. He will need consistency.

If, for example, Murray was able to reach the quarter-finals in Atlanta and Washington, and the round of 16 in the two Masters events, he would earn 270 points.

That would probably get him up to around 35 in the world rankings, and that would probably be enough to get him a seed after withdrawals. We know, for example, that Novak Djokovic will not be allowed to play due to his vaccination status and Alexander Zverev will be injured.

If Murray could go as far as a quarter-final in just one of the two Masters and show a little consistency in the others, that would all but guarantee it. The same could be said of winning either one of Atlanta or Washington.

As long as he stays injury free, you'd have to say he has an excellent chance. It's the first part that has been the difficult bit lately.

What we have seen this summer, though, Wimbledon second round aside, is that his tennis is at a better level than it has been for years. He has beaten a top-five player this month and beaten him well. His game is still there, and it should be good enough to get him into that top 35 or so before the US Open.