I’M TIRED BUT HAPPY TO WIN A REAL BATTLE
ANDY MURRAY admitted he was shattered but delighted after edging past Cameron Norrie in a tough three-set test at the China Open.
The 32-year-old claimed his first back-to-back Tour singles wins since undergoing hip surgery in January with a 7-6(6) 6-7(4) 6-1 victory over his fellow Brit in Beijing to reach a quarter-final for the first time in 12 months.
But the Scot had to dig deep, battling through fatigue in the second set before setting up a clash with either top seed Dominic Thiem or Chinese wild card Zhang Zhizhen.
There were flashes of the touch and plenty of the grit that took Murray to the world No.1 slot in a match that lasted two hours and 52 minutes.
He said: “I’m tired – I just had a sleep before coming. I’m really tired. That’s the first time I’ve had to do that since I came back.
“It’s something I need to kind of get used to again, especially playing at this level and that intensity.
“It was a good step for me. Whether I’d won or lost I was able to come out the following day and be competitive and play some good tennis.
“But obviously I’m happy I’ve got the day off tomorrow to recover.”
The twice Wimbledon champion served for the first set at 5-3 but was broken and Norrie also saved three set points in the tie-break before a double-fault handed it to his opponent.
But the British No.3 made Murray pay in the second set as he raced into a 5-2 lead as the Dunblane ace wilted.
He did summon up impressive reserves to square it at 5-5 but Norrie claimed the tie-break in some comfort to level.
Far from chucking it, Murray responded in devastating fashion, securing a double break as he claimed the first five games of the final set and eventually won it 6-1.
He said: “The good thing about tennis is you can change strategy and tactics. Pretty much the whole of the third set I tried to keep the points short. I started coming to the net a lot more.
“My feeling was that the average rally length went down by quite a few shots.
“In the third set I didn’t really feel like out of breath after any of the rallies.
“But in the middle of the second set I felt like there were three or four games where we were playing a lot of long points but he was also dictating the rallies.”