To believe that he can no longer play without experiencing intense emotions. A few weeks after his crazy epic first week in Melbourne, Andy Murray returned to competition on Monday in Doha with a new match with twists and turns. Facing Lorenzo Sonego (71st in the world, Murray is 70th) from the start looked like a hell of a trap that the Scotsman managed to thwart, overthrowing the Italian 4-6, 6-1, 7-6 in two and a half hours. To get out of it, he had to save three match points on his serve at 4-5 in the last set. In the 2nd round, another challenge awaits him in the person of an Alexander Zverev certainly seeded 4th in the tournament, but lacking in confidence.
He seems to no longer know how to make his life easier, but Andy Murray often emerges victorious from the fights he imposes on himself. On Monday, he again gave proof of this, despite a completely failed start to the match. Rusty on his first game of service, he thus conceded a white break from the start, on a double fault moreover. Unable to catch up, the Scot therefore found himself led a set to nothing, but started the second act with very different intentions.
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Sonego lost the battle of nerves
Recovered like a cuckoo clock, much more aggressive on the restart, “Sir Andy” changed the dynamic by seizing the opposing commitment twice in a row (4-6, 5-0), before quickly putting the counters back to zero. On his way, he even got a break point in the first game of the third set, but Sonego revolted, dropping his shots more and more. The game was then evenly balanced, until the Italian, again more enterprising, obtained two match points at 4-5, 15/40 on the restart. But at the fateful moment, his arm shook somewhat in the forehand after a long rally on his first opportunity.
On the second, Murray found a winning serve… as on the third arrival in stride. The cleaver came close, but with experience and mentality, he ended up finding the solution. Still trailing 3 points to 0 (and a double mini-break lead for Sonego!), the ex-world number 1 hung on like starving in defense and fouls rained down on the other side of the net . Result: six points scored consecutively before concluding this decisive 7-4 tie-break on his second match point. At the start of the 2023 season, “Sir Andy” has unsuspected resources.
No feat for Lestienne
Combativeness, Constant Lestienne also showed it for his entry into the running, but the Frenchman, 53rd in the world, could not reverse the established order against the seeded number 7 Alejandro Davidovich Fokina. There was too much of a gap between the one who reached the second round of the Australian Open a few weeks ago, and the Spaniard.
Constantly jostled in the service (only 51% of points won behind his first ball), broken from the start of the game, Lestienne gave in in two sets against the 31st in the ATP ranking (6-4, 6-3). Income from 4-0 to 4-3 in the second act, the native of Amiens missed two balls of 4 everywhere before losing in 1h25. The two other Frenchmen engaged in Qatar, Quentin Halys and Alexander Muller, will try to do better on Tuesday.
The summary of Lestienne’s loss to Davidovich Fokina
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