Rusty Murray misses Lendl
ANDY MURRAY left coach Ivan Lendl in Florida this week and for much of yesterday it looked like he wished he was back there with him.
In what was his first match for a month, the world No 4 was forced to l abour hard against Germany’s Michael Berrer in the opening round of the Dubai Championships but eventually won through 6-3, 4-6, 6-4 against a player ranked a humble 116.
Having travelled through nine time zones to resume his 2012 campaign after narrowly being outpointed by Novak Djokovic in Australia there was, inevitably, a degree of ring rust but this still got alarmingly close for comfort.
The heat and residual jet-lag did not help and Murray (above) said afterwards: ‘I felt a bit sick at the start. It was a bit up and down but I just didn’t feel great out there.’
There will be more important assignments this year but it was nonetheless a significant win, given what has gone before during this period in the previous two seasons.
Murray’s form swallow- dived following his appearances in the Melbourne final and he wants to avoid a repeat of that, especially as the coming weeks give him a chance to beef up his ranking with zero points to defend from 12 months ago.
The 24-year-old Scot can set himself for an assault on his main rivals if he does well in Dubai and at the two opening Masters series events in Indian Wells and Miami, and will look to i mprove today as he f aces Switzerland’s Marco Chiudinelli, who upset Nikolay Davydenko.
Lendl, who is playing a veteran’s event in Florida before reuniting with his client, will have been pleased that he eked out a break at 4-4 in the deciding set.
He finally managed to serve it out without the kind of fuss that had seen him miss numerous opportunities to make this the straightforward progression that many expected.
Murray had got a break for 3-2 in the second and all looked routine, but he was broken back immediately and unwound badly, displaying the kind of negative body language that Lendl looked to have knocked out of him in Australia.
Reverting to his old habit of hanging back too far in the court, he failed to consolidate early breaks in the decider and briefly looked in serious trouble before nicking the win.
Murray could rightly claim that it was the result which ultimately counted — and he now has one more win than he managed in the whole of February and March last year. ANNE Keothavong was beaten in the f i rst round of the BMW Malaysian Open in Kuala Lumpur yesterday. The eighth-seeded Briton went down 6-4, 7-5 to Taiwanese qualifier Hsieh Su-wei.
Keothavong struggled badly with her serve, winning only 37 per cent of points on her first delivery, as she lost in just over an hour and a half.