Tennis
Revenge on Murray's mind
2011-09-05 07:26
New York - Britain's Andy Murray, determined to have a short work night, won the first 14 points and rolled to a 6-1 6-4 6-2 victory Sunday over Feliciano Lopez of Spain in the third round of the US Open.
The fourth-seeded Murray, a three-time grand slam finalist gunning for his first major title, was never broken as he took less than two hours to improve his record against the Spaniard to 6-0.
"I've always quite enjoyed playing against guys that have come forward against me," said the Scotsman, who hit 25 winners and allowed him to win only 15 of 35 advances on the net.
"He does make quite a bit of mistakes at times," added Murray, who benefited from 44 unforced errors from Lopez.
After escaping from two sets down in a five-set victory over Dutchman Robin Haase in the second round, Murray cleanly executed his game plan as he made just 16 unforced errors in the match against the 25th seed.
"When you can get an early break, it can kind of set the tone for the rest of the match," said Murray, who led 3-0, 30-0 before Lopez won his first point.
"Tonight that was the case. And it was important because obviously after having a long match the other day, you don't want to ... have to play a three, four-hour match because it's not that easy to recover."
In the round of 16, Murray meets 22-year-old American wildcard Donald Young, who beat the Briton this year at Indian Wells.
Murray said he was keen to avenge that loss, which came during a downward spiral he fell in after losing the Australian Open final to Novak Djokovic.
"Yeah. Yeah, I do," he said when asked about wanting revenge.
"I was in a pretty bad place probably around Indian Wells. It was a tough, tough part of the year for me. It's not so much revenge against Donald. It's more for the situation I was in there and making sure that I can kind of move on from that."