Andy Murray aims to defend trophy at Queen's Club

Andy Murray hopes to start off his grass season strongly at Queen's

The British summer officially gets under way with the Queen's club tournament and Andy Murray is back and focused on lifting the trophy once more...

Andy Murray will be aiming for his fourth victory at Queen's Club when the Aegon Championships begin in London this week. 

The event marks the start of the grass court season and it takes place just two weeks before the start of Wimbledon. This means, alongside Murray, there are a number of top players taking part.

Last year's beaten finalist Marin Cilic is back to try and win the title he won in 2012, while other big names include Tomas Berdych and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. 

However, Murray will be the favourite to defend his title and will hope for a repeat of last year when success at Queen's was followed a few weeks later by the Wimbledon title. Murray beat Tsonga in the Queen's semi-final and then Cilic in the final, despite losing the first set on both occasions. 

He arrives back in London having been heartened by his run in the French Open; a semi-final appearance indicated a return to form after an indifferent start to the season. A quarter-final defeat in the Australian Open was followed by Davis Cup action where Murray led Great Britain to their first quarter-final since 1986 with victory over the United States. However, against Italy Murray surprisingly lost his second singles match against Fabio Fognini in straight sets as Britain were beaten. He has also not won an ATP title in 2014 and will look to put that right at Queen's Club.

Tomas Berdych will be hoping for success in the Aegon Championships to overcome his disappointment at the way he was knocked out of the French Open. The Czech player made the quarter-finals in Paris and, faced with Ernests Gulbis rather than Roger Federer, would have been confident of victory. However, he was never in the game, losing in straight sets in a match that was over in less than two hours. 

Wimbledon is the only Grand Slam final he has reached and he should be competing for the title at Queen's due to his powerful serve. So far this season, apart from reaching the last eight in Paris, he won the title in Rotterdam, reached the final in Dubai and the semi-finals at the Australian Open.

The last time Jo-Wilfried Tsonga was on grass courts competitively was at last year's Wimbledon, which ended in disappointment as he was one of a number of players forced to pull out of the tournament due to injury. The sixth-seed retired halfway through his second round match against Gulbis with a knee problem. 

He had been a semi-finalist in the two previous years at Wimbledon and will hope to be free of injury this year as he embarks on his grass court preparations. He was beaten in the fourth round of the French Open, taking only six games off Novak Djokovic. He never threatened to trouble the world number two, hitting only 16 winners against 38 unforced errors. 

Tsonga is another player with a game suitable for grass but, having been as high as number five in the ATP world rankings, he is now down to number 14 and needs a good grass court season to get back among the world's elite. He was a beaten semi-finalist at Queen's last year, winning the first set against Murray but losing out to the eventual champion. 

The world number three Stanislas Wawrinka, who won his first Grand Slam at the Australian Open earlier this year, will also be at Queen's Club, gaining a wildcard for the tournament after suffering an early loss at the French Open. His was the shock of the first round as he was beaten by Spain's Guillermo Garcia-Lopez, and he will want a good tournament at Queen's to banish memories of that defeat. 

His grass court record at Wimbledon is poor; he has lost in the first round in three of the last four years. This included a defeat to Lleyton Hewitt in straight sets last year. However, he also reached his first grass court final in 2013 at the Topshelf Open in Germany where he lost to Nicolas Mahut in straight sets. He will be seeded number one at Queen's due to his world ranking.

Hewitt himself will be competing at Queen's and the popular Australian will still be looking to cause a shock or two despite, at the age of 33, entering the final years of his playing career. 

The 2002 Wimbledon champion is a particular favourite at the Queen's Club, having won the tournament four times, including three in a row in 2000, 2001 and 2002. His longevity in the sport is highlighted by the fact that his first triumph at Queen's was a straight sets victory over Pete Sampras. He then beat Tim Henman two years in a row before returning to win the 2006 tournament when he beat James Blake in the final. 

He has won 29 career titles, his most recent being earlier this year on home soil at the Brisbane International where he beat Roger Federer in the final. Hewitt may not win the title at Queen's, but he is still a crowd-puller and event organisers will hope he has a good run. 

Ernests Gulbis comes to London on the back of a very successful French Open tournament. He reached the semi-finals of a Grand Slam for the first time, having beaten Roger Federer and Tomas Berdych on the way to an eventual defeat to Novak Djokovic. His current world ranking is 17, a career high.

Gulbis made the quarter-finals of the French Open as a teenager in 2008 but had underachieved at the major tournaments since and, in 2012, even dropped out of the world's top 100. However, he has re-discovered his form and has won his fifth and sixth ATP titles in 2014; in Marseille where he beat Tsonga in the final and in Nice, his first title on clay. He will now look to the grass court season and will be hoping to improve on reaching the third round at Wimbledon last year. 

Those looking for players of the future at the Aegon Championships may focus on the young Austrian Dominic Thiem. He has progressed well this season, winning games at both the Australian Open and in Paris last week, where he eventually lost in the second round to Rafael Nadal. He is currently the youngest man in the world's top 100, ranked at 57, and will be looking to improve on that in the coming months. 

Another relatively young player looking to progress in the game is Grigor Dimitrov who, at the age of 23, is now in the world's top 20. He will be joined at the Queen's Club by other leading players in the men's game, including Kevin Anderson, Alexandr Dolgopolov, Nicolas Mahut and Bernard Tomic.