Murray kid bins tennis hopes early

ANDY Murray’s daughter Sophia is unlikely to follow in his footsteps if her first reaction to a tennis racket is anything to go by.

The world number one revealed he gave 16-month-old Sophia a mini-racket, which she promptly threw in the bin.

Murray’s wife Kim and Sophia are with him in Paris as he continues his French Open campaign, which on Monday brought a 6-3 6-4 6-4 win over Karen Khachanov in the fourth round.

Asked i n an i nterview if his daughter was showing any interest in tennis, Murray said: “I think she kind of recognises me when I’m on the TV.

“I have a video on my phone where I have a little mini racket which I tried to give to her and she literally grabbed it, kind of looked at it and just walked over and put it straight in the bin.

“So I’m not sure she’s going to be into it so much. But it’s great my family’s here.”

After arriving at Roland Garros with expectations tempered by a season of struggle so far, Murray has played himself into form nicely.

He built on a fine third-round win over Juan Martin del Potro with his best performance of the tournament to beat Russian Khachanov.

The 21-year-old looks set to be a star of the future but Murray proved too wily for him, with a couple of dropped service games the only blips in an otherwise excellent performance.

And the Scot’s improvement since his first-round win over Andrey Kuznetsov last Tuesday has been met with approval by coach Ivan Lendl.

Murray said: “He was pumped, he was happy with how I played. The first couple of rounds he was pleased that I got through them.

“He’s very talkative away from the cameras, he loves tennis, he likes dissecting matches and talking about the tactics and the things that went well in the match, the things that as the match went on changed.

“We had quite a long chat after the Del Potro match how with each set I started to play a little bit better, started to see the patterns of play well.”

In the quarter-finals Murray will