MURRAY’S SO UPBEAT Champion targeting a Paire-fect match after patchy third-round win

daughter for an hour in the morning and I want to make sure I spend the time available with her. “I’ve got two days without a match this weekend and I’ll try to do stuff with my family in the mornings and the evenings around practice. “Obviously, I’ll be around home a bit more but I’ll still leave at 10.30am Saturday morning, practise at 1pm, see my physio for an hour and then warm-up for 30 or 40 minutes, practise, then into the ice bath. “It’s not like I’ll be sitting at home relaxing. “I’ll get more time to be with Sophia in the morning and then just before she goes to bed. “But there’s still a six, seven-hour period in the day where I’m here doing my stuff.” That says everything about Murray. He may have won three Grand Slams and two Olympic golds but he is always pushing to achieve more. He said: “The weekend can be valuable if I use it well. “I need to make sure that I practise properly – and it can be beneficial to settle the body down and recover a bit.” Making the quarter-finals here has never been an issue. Indeed, only once has he failed to win a fourth-round clash at Wimbledon – way back in 2006. The odds on him maintaining that sequence of relentless success tomorrow against world No.48 Paire look excellent – Murray has not lost to a rival from across the Channel in 25 matches.

“I don’t know why I play well against them,” said the Centre Court hero.

“There have been a lot of matches I’ve won against French players from losing positions. It’s not like I’ve killed them in every match. There have been a lot of close ones that I’ve just managed to get through.”

If recharging the batteries and fine-tuning the game is the immediate priority, Murray will also be keeping an eye on his car’s petrol tank.

The Dunblane ace almost ran out of fuel last week between SW19 and his Surrey home.

He said: “There was a moment when I was stuck in traffic with the fuel gauge close to empty and I thought, ‘This isn’t looking good’.

“Home felt a lot further than 11 miles away with Wimbledon in gridlock and about six miles’ worth of petrol in the tank. I always let it run down low – though not normally that low!”

Despite Friday’s late finish, he made a surprise appearance in the Royal Box yesterday morning before heading to the practice courts.

He was given a warm round of applause by the crowd who were celebrating the Olympians and Paralympians invited to the Centre Court box to watch the action on Middle Saturday.