Andy Murray made a fine start to his clay court season with a 6-0 6-3 thumping of Viktor Troicki. Murray recorded his fifth straight victory over Troicki, who has had an uninspiring year so far. Murray will play the winner of Julien Benneteau and Jurgen Melzer in the third round. Juan Monaco, who was coming off the back of winning the Houston title, was forced to retire in his first match when he suffered a nasty ankle twist when he tried to slide on the clay during a long baseline rally. Monaco was leading Robin Haase, 5-7 6-0 3-1 and his retirement handed a rare win for Haase, who now plays Fabio Fognini.
In other matches, Fernando Verdasco came back from a set down for the second day in a row to set up a third round clash with Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. Feliciano Lopez was not so lucky as he was swept aside by Stanislas Wawrinka, 6-4 6-1. Several of my third round tips were beaten today; one of them was Albert Ramos as his busy schedule finnaly caught up with him in a 6-2 7-5 defeat to Kei Nishikori.
Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and David Ferrer all begin their campaigns tomorrow although the most exciting match on the schedule is the first one on the Court Des Princes between Bernard Tomic and Alexander Dolgopolov. You may remember they fought out a slice-happy five set thriller on the Rod Laver Arena. A contest on the clay courts of Monte-Carlo is sure to be interesting...
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| Fernando Verdasco |
You can view my predictions for Monte-Carlo this week... so far it has been a mixed bag of correct and incorrect picks!
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