Indian tennis stars Sania Mirza and Rohan Bopanna earned contrasting victories to sail through to the quarter-finals of their respective categories at the Australian Open here on Monday.
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There were questions how Murray would respond in his first match after his father-in-law Nigel Sears, Ana Ivanovic’s coach, collapsed at the tournament and was taken to hospital on Saturday.
Murray said he would have pulled out of the tournament if the news was bad about Sears, but the 58-year-old made a quick recovery and was cleared to leave hospital the next day. Adding to the tension of the moment, Murray’s wife Kim Sears is heavily pregnant and he has pledged to rush home if she goes into labour.
Tomic has yet to take a set off Murray in four encounters.
Murray leads Ferrer 12-6 in their career head-to-head, with the Scot winning their last five meetings and beating the Spaniard in the semifinals in Melbourne in 2011. So it’s tough to recover, to rest, and at the same time play a grand slam.
“He works extremely hard”. He’s in good shape.
The hard-serving Canadian came into the fourth-rounder winless in four matches against Wawrinka, the 2014 Australian Open champion, and all their results had been close and involving tiebreakers.
Murray is perhaps relieved that he has it in his own hands to find a way to overcome Ferrer, rather than cope with off-court matters out of his control.
It was a tough, tough couple of days. “Hopefully, it gets better the next few days”, he said. “I’m just so happy I went through”, she said. “Nige is an unbelievably fit guy”.
“I felt quite drained, quite exhausted”. It certainly wasn’t straightforward. I just can’t believe something like that happened a few days ago.
Raonic next faces Gael Monfils, the Frenchman who beat Russian Andrey Kuznetsov 7-5, 3-6, 6-3, 7-6 (4).
Raonic – the Canadian 13th seed – underlined his threat by upstaging 2014 champion Wawrinka 6-4 6-3 5-7 4-6 6-3 to reach the quarter-finals.
In an all-German match, No. 7-seeded Angelique Kerber is playing Annika Beck in the first match on the main Rod Laver Arena. It’s all seeded opponents in the top half of the women’s bracket, though, with Williams facing Maria Sharapova and Agnieszka Radwanska set to play Carla Suarez Navarro.
Raonic, 25, already had one of the game’s better serves, but he started working on attacking the net more.
“It’s very much of an internal match for me”. I was putting pressure on him.
“I was volleying the first volley really well”. Not let him get into his sort of playing comfort.
“I wasn’t moving to do something else”.
Johanna Konta’s strong run at the Australian Open has continued with a 4-6, 6-4, 8-6 win over Ekaterina Makarova, advancing her to the quarterfinals. Coming in with a win in Brisbane.
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Milos Raonic has always turned heads with his big serve.
