ANDY MURRAY: Cruised to a comfortable victory over Ivo Karlovic in the French Open.
Advertisement
After expending considerable physical, emotional and mental energy battling from behind to beat Radek Stepanek and Mathias Bourgue in five sets in his first two matches, Murray knew he could not afford another epic.
After Murray had played his first two matches on Court Philippe Chatrier, which is the main stadium here, his third was played on Court Suzanne Lenglen, which looked a picture on the best day of the tournament so far.
It was plain sailing for the Scotsman in the opening set as he held throughout, dropping just one game to grab an early foothold in the contest as he quickly raced into a lead that he would not relinquish.
Karlovic, seeded No. 27, needed 41 aces to win his second-round match in five sets.
No player in the Open era has won a grand slam having played more than three five-set matches in a single tournament. I was glad to win the tiebreak and get off the court, ‘ said Murray. “I hope to win the next one a little bit faster”, Murray said.
“I have had good success against him in the past and I have always enjoyed playing against serve and volleyers, normally”, Murray said.
“It’s been a tough few days”, Murray said. “I just had to fight, that was it”.
There were few signs of imminent danger for Murray when he broke Bourgue twice to grab the opening set, and the Scot then forged 2-0 ahead in the second. “Today, it was a shame the match was so long as it means I don’t get to see her [Sophia] much”. Trailing 5-1, Bourgue won two games in succession and led 30-15 on the Murray serve but the latter closed out his spirited yet exhausted opponent, to the crowd’s dismay, with a crunching backhand down the line.
Next up for Murray on Friday is 6ft 11in Ivo Karlovic, who is likely also to be feeling tired after finally overcoming Australia’s Jordan Thompson 12-10 in the fifth set in round two.
Number two seed Murray has played ten grueling sets over his first two matches and covered an extraordinary distance of 7349.9 metres.
Bourgue took full advantage, reeling off eight straight games to transform Murray’s advantage into one of his own. Obviously we can expect fairly short points and once again Murray’s returning will need to be on point to avoid being the second Brit to be ousted by Isner.
As ever, today’s result will depend entirely on Murray: if he can rediscover his timing and keep his concentration screwed down, he will know exactly what he needs to do to beat Karlovic. The Croat has won 87 per cent of points on his first serve and won 48 out of his 50 service games even on the slower clay surface. The challenge for Murray is finding a way to break against the towering Karlovic, knowing that one poor service game on his part could determine the set.
Advertisement
Second seed Agnieszka Radwanska took advantage of Caroline Garcia’s weak serve to advance into the third round with a 6-2 6-4 victory. On Wednesday he had no trouble with Andrey Kuznetsov, eliminating the Russian in a very comfortable three-set match 6-3, 6-3, 6-3.
