Lendl’s switch did trick
TENNIS: FRENCH OPEN MURRAY DITCHES GYM
® from IAIN STEWART in Paris
ANDY MURRAY has thanked mentor Ivan Lendl for dragging him out of the gym and back onto the tennis court.
Murray’s training had seen him focus heavily on fitness in his charge to being world No.1.
But after a below-par start to the season, reuniting with Lendl three days before the start of the French Open has sparked an upturn in form.
The Scot has improved during every round at Roland Garros and will be favourite to progress in today’s quarter-final against Kei Nishikori.
He said: “A lot of the time, when things are not going well, you start overthinking things.
“You start wanting to try new things on the practice court, changing tensions in your racket. You think all sorts of things to work out what is going wrong.
“The one thing we did when Ivan got here, we went right back to the basics. No time in the gym – it was just tennis, plain tennis. We hit lots of balls!
Confidence
“The drills we were doing were all pretty simple drills but we spent a lot of time on the court.
“It was about making a lot of balls, making myself difficult to beat. Then once you start to do that, you get through a couple of matches and you start feeling better.
“Your confidence grows. It can be right down at the bottom and it can go right up to the top pretty quickly. That has been the case so far this tournament.”
Murray feels stronger and fresher than he did last year when he reached the Paris final.
This year, Murray has spent nearly an hour less on court, sending his last two opponents packing in straight sets.
“Certainly, I feel fresher than last year,” he said. “Last year at the start of the tournament was pretty tough. I didn’t play well in the first couple of rounds and they were hard matches.
“The body probably feels a little bit better than it did last year.”
Nishikori has played two more sets than Murray and said: “I will need to try to be physically ready for another long, tough match.” ¬Ê Unseeded Latvian Jelena Ostapenko last night became the first teenager to reach the women’s semi-finals since 2007.
Ostapenko, 19, beat Caroline Wozniacki 4-6 6-2 6-2 and will now play Timea Bacsinszky.