Murray Starts Quickly To Advance at Wimbledon
Seeking his second career title at Wimbledon, Andy Murray began his journey with a routine straight set win in his first round match Tuesday, rolling past fellow Briton Liam Broady 6-2, 6-3, 6-4 to advance to the second round.
Murray dominated on serve, winning 77 percent of the points on his serve and faced just two break points in three sets.
“I served pretty well,” Murray said. “Offensively, there was good stuff. Defensively maybe I could have done a little better but it’s not that easy playing someone you know. We’re both out there just trying to win but it doesn’t make it any easier.”
Murray made sure he didn’t need to spend any more time on the court than he needed to, learning from his slow start at the French Open. In his first two rounds at Roland Garros, Murray had to win the fourth and fifth sets of both matches to advance, so his quick start to Wimbledon was something that pleased him.
“My job is to learn from the French Open and one of the things I could have done better there is start the tournament quicker,” said Murray. “Those first few days were tough, psychologically and physically, and although I recovered from it, the match against Gasquet again was a match where I was 5-2 up in the first, 5-2 up in the second and I ended up being on court for an hour, an hour and 20 longer than I needed to in that match if I had just closed out those sets a little bit quicker.
So that is something I obviously try to learn from the French and try and start a little bit quicker at Wimbledon.”
The 2013 champion will look to make it another quick start when he takes on Yen-Hsun Lu in the second round. The Chinese Taipei native defeated Alexander Kudryavtsev 6-4, 6-1, 6-4 in his opener on Tuesday.
Last year, American Taylor Fritz was playing in the junior version of this tournament, but found himself on the other side of the net from two-time Grand Slam champion and fourth-seed Stan Wawrinka on Tuesday.
Fritz gave Wawrinka all he could handle, but in the end, the Swiss star was too much, outlasting Fritz 7-6(4), 6-1, 6-7(2), 6-4.
“Taylor’s a great player, really talented for sure, and he has a lot of shots,” Wawrinka said of the young American afterwards. “He’s really young and he has a lot of time in front of him to improve but you can already see that he’s a strong player.”
In the second round, Wawrinka will square off with Argentina’s Juan Martin del Potro. The former U.S. Open champion won his first match at Wimbledon since his 2013 semifinal run with a 6-1, 7-5, 6-0 triumph over Stephane Robert.
“I am feeling so glad to play at Wimbledon again,” del Potro said afterwards. “I had great supporters today at my match. Everywhere I’m playing, the fans are supporting me a lot. They don’t care if I win or lose. They just want to see me playing again. That’s great for me. “
Seventh-seed Richard Gasquet, 12th seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and 15th seed Nick Kyrgios were other big winners on Tuesday.
