‘Old boy’ Andy Murray insists he is feeling fresh and ready for more matches after making it seven wins on the trot with a second round victory at the LTA’s Rothesay Open Nottingham on Thursday night.
Murray, riding a six match win streak after his triumph at the Lexus Surbiton Trophy and an opening round victory in Nottingham, faced little trouble as he dispatched world No.127 Hugo Grenier 6-3 7-5 to set up a quarter-final meeting against eighth seed Dominic Stricker on Friday.
The two-time Wimbledon champion has dropped just one set on grass courts so far this summer and will be a hot favourite against Swiss star Stricker, a 20-year-old former junior prodigy who beat Britain’s Ryan Peniston 6-4 6-2 in the second round.
And although Murray prepares for an eighth match inside two weeks, the 36-year-old is ready to push on across the weekend despite the fitness issues that have dogged him in recent years.
“I feel like I moved well there. The matches haven’t been too long, the final in Surbiton was quite a quick one and then the first round here as well, so I’m recovering well,” he said.
“It’s been a lot of matches for me, and I’m an old boy now so it takes me a little bit longer to recover but I’m feeling good.
“I love competing obviously. At times I get frustrated but for me that’s always been part of competing. I want to do my best and when I’m not doing that I obviously get frustrated with myself, but it was a really nice atmosphere today and hopefully that will keep progressing as we go along.”
Today’s match against Grenier proved a different proposition for Murray than his first round win versus Joris De Loore, with the Frenchman having more grass guile.
But it was nothing that fazed the two-time Wimbledon champion, who was barely threatened on serve and was able to close out the match with little fuss.
He added: “It was a very different match to the first day. He played with quite a lot of variety and he liked to come to the net, he served well.
“From the back of the court he didn’t have a lot of power but he used a lot of slice and angles, slowballed me a little bit. It was very different to the first match but it felt like I dealt with it quite well.
“I was dictating quite a lot of the rallies and in the second set I just had to hang in on his service games as he was serving extremely well, and I managed to get the break at the end.”
Elsewhere, it was a historic day for British women’s tennis in Nottingham, with there now being four British women in the quarter-final of a WTA event for the first time in history.
After Heather Watson had beaten Wimbledon semi-finalist Tatjana Maria on Wednesday, Katie Boulter, Harriet Dart and Jodie Burrage all won their second round matches on Thursday to reach the last eight.
Boulter started Wednesday’s action with a 7-5 6-3 win over Ukrainian lucky loser Daria Snigur while Dart followed that with a win over another Ukrainian in the form of fifth seed Anhelina Kalinina, beating the Italian Open finalist 6-0 7-5.
Boulter and Dart will now face off in the last eight on Friday, ensuring that at least one Brit will be in semi-final action on Saturday.
And Burrage will be hoping to join one of them and potentially Watson after she beat Polish third seed and this year’s Australian Open semi-finalist Magda Linette 7-5 6-3 to reach her first ever WTA Tour quarter-final, with another Pole in the form of Magdalena Frech waiting on Friday.
For the latest action on the British summer grass court season, check out the LTA website
