Spain’s Albert Ramos-Vinolas said his father was so nervous he couldn’t work and his mother was running around the house as they watched their son upend the great Roger Federer at the Shanghai Masters yesterday.
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Murray, who has climbed back above Roger Federer to second in the world rankings, is 3/7 to win in straight sets but could be rusty after his extended break.
Jo-Wilfried Tsonga also took three sets to subdue Tommy Robredo 6-7 (5/7), 6-2, 6-2, while Australia’s Nick Krygios reached the second round with a 6-3, 6-2 win over Austrian Andreas Haider-Maurer.
Federer started off slowly against the 70th-ranked Ramos-Vinolas, failing to convert two break points in the opening set and making a flurry of backhand errors to lose the tiebreaker.
Then there was the only previous meeting between Federer and the left-handed Spaniard, which was nothing short of a trouncing, for the loss of just three games, at Wimbledon in 2012. But I played really good.
The 16th seed was broken just once as he lost only five games in the final match of the day in China.
The 24-year-old Wu was chasing his first ATP-level victory and produced inspired tennis as he stretched 2014 US Open champion Cilic to a third-set tie-break.
“I’m sweating after seeing the draw”, said Wu, who attended the ceremony. None of these important matches, I won none of those ones.
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Meanwhile, John Isner smashed 20 aces to defeat France’s Adrian Mannarino 6-1, 6-2 in 45 minutes in his opening match of the Masters on Monday. He consequently remains in 15th place on the Road to London leaderboard, or in other words, last in line out of eleven players bidding for qualification. “I don’t underestimate or lack respect for anybody out there”. I don’t know what the results are going to be till the end of the season. “When somebody’s playing like Novak, he’s very hard to beat, especially in his favourite surface”.
