Now, Murray will face either Japanese fifth seed Kei Nishikori or home favourite Richard Gasquet of France in the last eight.
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Twice Murray and Gasquet have faced off at Roland Garros, with the Briton prevailing both times, including in the 2010 first round when he recovered from two sets to love down.
“I m pumped to be in the quarters of a slam”.
In two of those meetings Murray came back to win from two sets down.
Murray enjoys facing big servers and has never lost in 12 matches against Karlovic and Isner. Murray recalled that the latter had been a hard match considering that it was in the first round. Most of the time I have handled that pretty well, ‘ he said.
The Scot also remembered their 2012 meeting here. “It was actually raining quite a bit that day”, he said.
Tennis betting on the Betfair Exchange just got bigger and better! It’s not easy, he might be winning a match then losing it or playing badly, or the pressure’s on a lot, whatever it might be.
The ninth-seeded Chinese, who reached the semifinal of Australian Open earlier this year, boosted their chances of vying for a berth to the Rio Olympic Games with the victory on clay-court. Having served superbly against Nishikori and having hit trademark backhand winners at will, Gasquet is now a serious challenger at Roland Garros. The only other time he made it that far was at the 2011 US Open, losing at that stage to Murray.
Before the rain returned to Paris like an unwanted guest, Stan Wawrinka put 19 aces and 67 clean winners past Victor Troicki to send a message to the rest of the field – and Murray, potentially, in the semi-finals – that he is in the right mood to hold on to his French Open title.
“I think some of it’s a mentality as well”, he said. “When I was playing in the black with a black hat I didn’t feel great. So I’m leaving this tournament with positive feelings going forward in my year here in 2016”. That’s not why I’ve lost matches. I just needed to serve better and get into the net.
Play was completely abandoned at lunchtime yesterday for the first time in 16 years.
“He runs all over the place”, Gasquet said. He’s very strong mentally.
White is normally worn by the good guys, in the movies anyway, but Murray will be the villain today when he takes on the last Frenchman standing.
On the women’s part, fourth seed Garbine Muguruza, sixth-seeded Simona Halep and world No. 2 Agnieszka Radwanska all advanced to the last eight, while Romanian Irina-Camelia Begu crashed out after losing 6-3, 6-4 to unseeded Americxan Shelby Rogers.
“It was a very important tiebreak to win”, Murray told BBC Sport. “I have been (the) No. 1 American for a long time now – generally around 14, 13 in the world, which I’m very proud of”.
“The crowd is always important”.
“There are different reasons for playing tournaments sometimes and, for me, Davis Cup and Olympics, I’m not playing for ranking points”. “Of course it will be the same on Tuesday, but for sure I need to play a big match to win against Andy”.
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Andy Murray hopes he has repaired some of the damage from his first two matches at the French Open after taking a much more direct route into the fourth round.
