“And Dan, when he plays well, is not easy to play against”.
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Lu, who beat Murray at the Beijing Olympics in 2008, is no pushover and has enjoyed some decent results at Wimbledon. Murray was reaching the peak of his powers-he had just won the Cincinnati Masters and would go on to reach his first US Open final, while Lu was ranked just the same as he is now. Murray is through to the last 16 of his 22nd Grand Slam tournament in succession after his 49th Wimbledon victory took him one clear of the total of wins enjoyed at the All England Club by his coach, Ivan Lendl. The matches, in the next round especially, are tough. He’s played a few good matches there in Brisbane.
Young, meanwhile, won his first match at Wimbledon after losing in the first round in his five previous appearances.
That made for an 11-match winning streak. Keys, a quarterfinalist a year ago, had 48 winners – more than double the Belgian player’s 22. He arrived at Wimbledon yet again with the Queen’s title, and quickly began to assert his superior power and touch.
After a series of interruptions to the second set brought on by the weather, Murray failed to convert two set points when holding a 5-3 lead, Millman recovering to draw level in the set.
Millman broke into the world’s top 100 last summer.
With that, the flood-gates opened.
Millman’s desperation bubbled over in the first game of the third set when, chasing down a Murray drop shot, he slipped and fell heavily. The No2 seed began to make first-strike returns, and broke to love. “You don’t just not see what’s going on and you think about it. But it wasn’t something that was going through my mind for more than 10 or 15 seconds”.
Murray may not have been paying close attention to Djokovic, but the rush of adrenaline upon seeing his chances of winning the tournament go through the roof could easily have helped carry him through some rough spots in the match against Millman. Once I managed to hang on at end of the first set, he had break points but I settled down towards the end of the second set.
Milos Raonic advanced to the third round at Wimbledon by beating Andreas Seppi 7-6 (5), 6-4, 6-2.
Elsewhere, the biggest upset was the loss of No13 seed David Ferrer, though he did face one of the best unseeded grass exponents in the field, ‘s-Hertogenbosch champion Nicolas Mahut.
A shock defeat for world tennis number one Novak Djokovic.
In women’s matches, fourth-seeded Angelique Kerber advanced with a 6-1, 6-4 win over Varvara Lepchenko, and No. 5 Simona Halep beat Francesca Schiavone 6-1, 6-1. He’s got nothing to lose against the world’s second best player and he must play that way.
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In a match punctuated by short rain delays before being played out under a closed roof, Murray’s momentum did not falter as he completed a 6-3 7-5 6-2 victory over his Australian opponent. When you are playing a player who’s playing very well, you have to find a way to do anything you can.
