Andy Murray and Stan Wawrinka are making a relative mess of their respective treks through the bottom half of the French Open draw. What counts, of course, is that they remain alive. But to say it has not been easy would be a gross understatement.
Murray has won two straight five-setters over qualifier Radek Stepanek and wild card Mathias Bourgue. After scraping past Stepanek 3-6, 3-6, 6-0, 6-3, 7-5 in a darkness-delayed match on Tuesday, the second-ranked Scot overcame the little-known Bourgue 6-2, 2-6, 4-6, 6-2, 6-3 on Wednesday.
“Today certainly wasn’t easy,” Murray commented after getting past the world No. 164. “I lost my way on the court today for quite a while. So (it was good) to turn it around and find a way to win after a period where I was struggling to win points at one stage–I was losing a lot of games at love. It felt like…every time the ball was in the middle of the court he was hitting winners. I couldn’t see where his shots were going. Yeah, it was a big struggle.”
Wawrinka at least reduced his number of required sets from five to three, but he also ran into some difficulty on Tuesday. Having previously outlasted Lukas Rosol 4-6, 6-1, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4, the defending Roland Garros champion defeated Taro Daniel 7-6(7), 6-3, 6-4. But Wawrinka trailed 6-4 in the first-set tiebreaker and by 4-2 in the third before bouncing back in each of those sets.
“(It) was a good match,” the world No. 4 assessed. “I’m happy to get through in three sets. For sure it was some up and down, could have been better, but winning three sets [is] always good…. In general I think it’s been a good day.”
Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal will hope to have an easier time of things on Thursday, just as they did in their opening-round matches. Djokovic coasted past Yen-Hsun Lu 6-4, 6-1, 6-1, while Nadal triple-breadsticked Sam Groth 6-1, 6-1, 6-1.
Next up for the world No. 1 is Steve Darcis, whom he leads 2-0 in the head-to-head series. Djokovic rolled 6-4, 6-0 eight years ago on the clay courts of the Rome Masters and 6-0, 7-5 last year in Miami. Darcis is coming off a 6-3, 6-4, 6-0 blowout of Marsel Ilhan, which gave the 161st-ranked Belgian his first ATP-level victory of the season and his fourth career win in the French Open main draw. Since losing the opening set of his qualifying campaign last week, Darcis has reeled off nine consecutive sets.
“I love sharks,” Djokovic quipped when told Darcis’ nickname is ‘The Shark.’ “He’s been around the tour for many years. He had a couple of big wins–I think (against) Nadal in Wimbledon a couple of years ago. Generally, I think he prefers playing on quicker surfaces. So I haven’t seen him play much on clay; gonna have to do a little bit of homework there.”
Nadal is also set for a first-time encounter, as he has faced Facundo Bagnis. The all-lefty battle was booked when Bagnis downed Kenny De Schepper 6-0, 6-2, 7-6(2) on Tuesday. The 99th-ranked Argentine is perhaps best known for beating Julien Benneteau 18-16 in the fifth set in round one of this event two years ago. That had been the only Grand Slam win of Bagnis’ career until he victimized De Schepper.
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Is guga kuerten coaching Novak for RG?
Novak is tweeting a bit about him these days.
PR exercise most likely.
Exactly. He assiduously cultivates friendships with the big names at every tournament.
ed, did you see my reply on Daily Picks explaining why I made the comment about Murray winning back to back 5 set matches. It’s Murray who was defaming his opponents by saying he gets suspicious of specific players doing just that.
I assumed you were joking!
No, I wasn’t. It was really out of order for Andy to make such comments as the anecdotes he used to illustrate his claim were directly aimed at Rafa and Novak.
Keep your mind focused, stay confident and enjoy the game, Rafa!
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CjXWRFaUUAAbW0R.jpg
Not a good start being broken in the first set.
ok here we are. not a good start. but has pulled it back in his second service game…
Hope Rafa wraps this up quickly. Wind and heavy rain heading to Paris any minute now.
oh great! so we could have 2 nervy starts instead of one!
I’m watching on Eurosport Player which is a several minutes behind real play. Why is Rafa dropping so many balls short on the service line. Want to see some of that venom please.
Was that a rhetorical question?
That’s a bit more like it.
some good rallies in the first set…Rafa playing just enough for the win in the first set…good job! He does not need to expand too much energy…hope he is quick…don’t like rain interruptions at all…
TV for Rafa when he was serving for the set. He must have been like 3 seconds over.
loud reactions from the Argentine when he makes errors…he gets on my nerves…
Dominant…brilliant…the King of Clay in action…
it’s not that Bagnis is not trying…he is a clay courter after all…but his game is totally neutralized by Rafa…
^^Looks like he has a nasty temper.
the Serbian commentator saying that Bagnis breaking Rafa in the first game only woke up an animal in Rafa… 🙂
Eurosport has switched to Djoker vs Darcis which is more competitive so I’m now watching Rafa on Eurosport Player.
Wasn’t it Darcis who put Rafa out of Wimbledon some years back but incurred a shoulder injury in the process which kept him out of the game for ages?
It was Darcis.
That was his meal ticket.
I’m surprised he still has to play tennis what with the multi-millions of dollars from endorsements that must have dropped in his lap after that win.
But I guess it’s not the money that drives these pros.
Suppose it’s too much to hope he would pull it off twice 🙂
Bother. Was hoping Rafa would make it a double bagel.
Dont believe it. Rafa fails to serve out the match.
#Nerves never far away 🙁
Exactly ed. They are always there under the surfrace.
no, there were no nerves when serving for the match! Rafa just saw himself already in the locker room, taking a nice hot shower…no nerves at all, just one loose game…
Rafa played very good match…did not push hard…didn’t need to…
Riiiiiiight.
#EdHasANiceAvatar
dear hawks,
first you need to watch the match in order to judge Rafa’s play, don’t you think? 🙂
#youarewelcome
dear nats,
first you need to ask me if I watched the match in order to judge that I didn’t, don’t you think? 🙂
#YoureWelcomeYetAgain
And no disrespect intended, but even if I hadn’t watched the match, it’s not rocket science to correlate nerves to the ONLY two times Rafa being broken in the match just happening on his FIRST and LAST service games.
@ hawks 2:46 PM,
sorry if you did see the match! My impression was you didn’t! My bad, sorry again.
however, I still disagree…In his first game Rafa did not know what to expect from his opponent and was having a slow start…nothing to do with nerves…when serving for the match, two breaks up, do you really think Rafa was at all nervous??? Believe me, he was not…this match was really a straight forward one for Rafa…and it’s not that Argentine failed to put up a fight…there were involved in some nice rallies…
However, we all can observe Rafa’s level of play in somewhat different way…the statistics speak for themselves…Rafa was cruising and never felt nervous IMO…
Vamos Champ!
I saw the match. Rafa played great for 95% of the match EXCEPT first and last service games.
The first service break had only to do with Rafa hitting short (due to early nerves) which he quickly sorted out.
Similarly, he didn’t execute on his shots and made poor decisions serving for the match which were mental errors.
Other than that, he played and executed very well and only showed signs of nerves on those two breaks.
I respect your opinion but I respectfully disagree.
But at least we discuss tennis and not posters which is the way it should always be!!! 🙂 🙂 🙂
I don’t always live up to it but there are degrees of evil.
Rafa’s stats:
Set1
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CjYl6eMVEAAz2v6.jpg
Set2
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CjYl8nAUYAAkCXB.jpg
🙂 🙂
Rafa’s stats:
Match:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CjYl-2VUYAM6JcR.jpg
🙂 🙂 🙂
The tennis channel is showing Novak’s match. So I can’t see Rafa!
Okay, I checked the score online and Rafa won easily!
In the third round!
That Djjokovic will win is NID but Darcis is making him work hard for it.
by watching Rafa and Novak play their respective matches I feel so sad that one of them will not play in the finals…It’s just unfair…these two are currently the best on clay and they will meet in the semis…stupid RG draw…
agreed. they should seed according to surface. i am furious about it as well..
the worst scenario is that the 2 kill each other so the winner is out of it for the final. i really don’t want to see that happen…
agreed…me too…