Madrid Open: Andy Murray’s hopes of winning the Wimbledon championship remain unaffected by his loss to Andrea Vavassori on Thursday in the opening round of the Madrid Open.
The Italian defeated Murray 6-2, 7-6 (7) to advance to the second round, where he will face world No. 3 Daniil Medvedev, and achieve the biggest victory in his career.
Vavassori defeated Murray after a one-hour, 33-minute match by earning 76% (13/17) of the net points.
In the second set, the 27-year-old lost a breakpoint and acknowledged getting anxious. However, he managed to hang on throughout the tie-break to win on his fifth match point.
The British player suffered his fourth straight loss against a 164th-ranked opponent, matching the worst run of his professional career.
It was the third tournament in a row that he dropped his first game. Murray lost to his first opponents in Monte Carlo and Miami while winning in Madrid in 2008 and 2015.
Murray’s ability to enter the contest in the second set was the only positive aspect of his performance.
In the second set, Murray fell behind early after dropping the first four games against qualifier Vavassori, 27, who is now ranked at the top of his profession.
The Italian played well, but Murray struggled to move past his opponent’s serve and committed too many unforced errors.
In the eighth game, he made a change, breaking Vavassori for the first time. In the tie-break, he saved four match points, only to net two easy volleys.
“It wasn’t very good. The beginning was slow, but towards the finish, I started to play a little better. He started out playing extremely well, and he is serving enormously. Some of the mistakes are difficult to explain,” Murray later remarked.
Murray hasn’t lost four straight matches since the beginning of 2019, when his hip issues were at their worst. Having advanced to the third round in the Spanish capital last year, he is expected to fall back outside of the top 60.
Things are obviously not going as he would have planned given that one of the key goals for the 35-year-old playing on clay was to increase his ranking in an effort to be seeded for Wimbledon.
He still plans to compete in the French Open, though.
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