Djokovic, however, will be just as desperate as Murray to finally triumph at Roland Garros – if not more – having reached the semi-finals for the eighth time on Thursday, but Rusedski believes he nearly wants it too badly.
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“Stop it!” shouted Murray after his fourth double fault of the afternoon but it did not signal another collapse, and the world number two reeled off 13 of the last 15 games to win in three hours and 23 minutes. “Both of us had our chances in the first two sets and it was very important for me to win the second set”.
However, Murray has improved significantly on the surface in the past two years and beat Djokovic in the Italian Open final before heading to Paris.
“I played some really good stuff today, I do think I played well”.
“I have my first win over Venus – it’s just unbelievable”.
“I don’t know who allows us to play in these kind of conditions”.
“But I believe it’s possible and only a couple of matches away now. I’ll just give everything I’ve got the next few days”, he said.
Djokovic finally booked his place in the quarter-finals by beating Bautista Agut in a match that had been scheduled to play on Monday before rain intervened and it sees him become the first player to pass $100m (about £69m) in prize money. He plays well on that court.
Winning the tie-break restored Murray’s lost confidence in his game and soon it was he who was dictating with his backhand. For sure the crowd were behind him, but it wasn’t too bad. “It’s totally fine I think for me and for everyone”. Murray led 3-1, three games from the victory.
Having charged to within a game of the opening set Murray proceeded to lose serve twice in a row to hand Gasquet, the last French player left in the tournament, the initiative on Court Philippe Chatrier. It has got to be one of the matches of the tournament.
“I was using a lot of drop shots at the start of the match”.
Alas, of the 12 singles matches on Tuesday’s schedule, those were the only two that finished. It wasn’t easy for me.
But Rogers, unseeded, must first get the better of No. 4 Garbine Muguruza of Spain, who is determined to reach the last four after losing in the quarterfinals for the past two years.
It was a victory for mental and physical strength as the world No 2 this time weathered an on-court storm on a rare dry day in Paris.
The Scot has lost his last seven sets and three matches straight to Wawrinka in a career series that Murray leads 8-7, but this will be their first clash since last year’s Tour Finals. So I have a different mentality this year.
The situation is even more extreme in the women’s draw, where the likes of Serena and Venus Williams have not yet started their fourth-round matches and could have to play four times in four days.
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Gasquet did it for a short while, but as I said in my preview of that one, he isn’t fit enough by a long chalk to do it over the best of five sets against someone like Murray, who kept on making him run.
