Murray served out the set to love after a stiff-looking Karlovic finally got on the board and the Scotsman carried on where he left off with a break in the opening game of the second set, forcing another error from his out-of-sorts opponent.
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Karlovic and Murray have played six times with Murray winning each time.
He has the best winning percentage on clay, formerly his weakest surface, of anyone over the past 13 months, making his difficulties during the first two rounds even more perplexing.
With Murray and Wawrinka both struggling to play their best against the peripheral competition, you have to wonder if the stronger players to come will be as lenient as the competition was in the early rounds.
It is only the third round and yet Andy Murray has already played ten sets and spent seven-and-a-quarter hours on court.
In contrast, Rafael Nadal has rattled through his opening two matches in just three hours and four minutes, while Djokovic has taken a little longer, but not much, needing three hours and 47 minutes to book his place in the third round.
“I showed a lot of heart the last few days in tough matches”, added the second seed who celebrated Wednesday’s win by poking his chest with his index finger.
“I managed to win the match. To go far in the tournament you can’t play too many matches like this”, said Murray, who’ll play veteran big-serving Croat Ivo Karlovic for a spot in the last 16. “The most important thing now is to rest and recover”, he said. I don’t know if that’s because I was missing balls. “I lost my way on the court for quite a while”, said Murray.
Murray has been helped with his physical recovery by his physio Mark Bender, known as the “back whisperer”. A Romanian newspaper asked her if she was surprised by the reactions of some players, with particular reference to the statements of Dominika Cibulkova.
This time it was little-known 22-year-old French wildcard Mathias Borgue, playing only his second grand slam match, who led the former U.S. Open and Wimbledon champion astray. Karlovic has broken serve just 3% of the time on tour this year.
Women’s seeded winners: No. 2 Agnieszka Radwanska, No. 4 Garbine Muguruza, No. 6 Simona Halep, No. 10 Petra Kvitova, No. 11 Lucie Safarova, No. 13 Svetlana Kuznetsova, No. 19 Sloane Stephens, No. 21 Sam Stosur, No. 24 Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, No. 25 Irina-Camelia Begu, No. 30 Barbora Strycova.
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The Scot suffered a spectacular mid-match collapse in which he lost eight games in a row and went from a set up to two sets down, before rallying against a wilting Bourge to prevail 6-2, 2-6, 4-6, 6-2, 6-3. Still 18 and playing in only her second major tournament, Naomi Osaka also has yet to drop a set.
