Andy Murray opened his Roland Garros bid on Tuesday to go one better than last year’s runner-up finish. Reunited in tournament play with his head coach Ivan Lendl for the first time since January, the World No. 1 knocked out Russia’s Andrey Kuznetsov 6-4, 4-6, 6-2, 6-0.
“He goes for his shots and plays aggressive,” Murray told the host TV broadcaster. “He hits the ball flat, so he takes your time away. But it was quite windy today. I started to feel better as the match wore on. Last year was a great year for me, it was the best I’d ever played here after 10 years. Also, last year during Bercy [Tennis Paris Masters], was when I reached No. 1 [in the Emirates ATP Rankings] for the first time, so I have very good memories from Paris.”
The 30-year-old Murray, now three match wins away from 650 victories in his career, goes on to face the talented Slovakian Martin Klizan in the second round.
Having come into the tournament under-cooked, in comparison to his 2016 dominant best, Murray was broken four times in a far from perfect opening match. But flashes of his former self – backhand passes and fine drop shot executions – helped the Scot take control in the third set and onto a run of eight straight games. He visibly grew in confidence and belief to beat the World No. 73 in two hours and 32 minutes.
"It definitely got better as it went on," said Murray. "I started to move a bit better towards the end. I was hitting the ball better when I was defending. That's something the last few weeks I haven't done so well and didn't start off the match doing particularly well. But once I was getting a little bit more on my ball when I was defending, there wasn't too many openings for him in the points. It was a decent start, considering obviously how I played in the build-up."
Earlier in the day, Klizan worked his way past France’s Laurent Lokoli, making only his third major championship appearance, 7-6(4), 6-3, 4-6, 0-6, 6-4 in three hours and 39 minutes.
Looking ahead to his next match, Murray said, "He has a lot of talent. He can hit a big ball. He is quite unpredictable on the court. He plays a lot of drop shots and quite unorthodox sort of shot selection, so it can be difficult to prepare for that. Obviously, I saw a few videos of his match today... Hopefully, I can go out there and play some good tennis and make it tough for him, because he had a very long match today."
Go inside the tournament at RolandGarros.com.