WORLD No.1 Andy Murray suffered another early exit as he lost 6-2 6-4 against Fabio Fognini at the Internazionali BNL d’Italia in Rome, where Johanna Konta had earlier reached the third round.
Murray, who turned 30 on Monday, continues to struggle for consistency on his return from an elbow injury, having reached the semi-finals in Barcelona only to then be knocked out of the Madrid Open by Croatia’s Borna Coric, the world No.41.
Fognini delighted the partisan home crowd late last night under the floodlights when the world No.29 broke Murray in the opening game and went on to take a 3-0 lead before closing out the set 6-2 with a love service.
Murray, the defending champion, found himself under pressure in the second set, when his serve failed again as Fognini opened up a 4-1 advantage.
There was a brief recovery by Murray as a break and a hold saw him trail 4-5. Fognini, though, maintained his dominance to serve out and secure a first win over a world No.1.
Earlier, there had been no such bother for British No.1 Konta, who started her Italian Open campaign with a straight-forward 6-3 6-0 victory over Yulia Putintseva.
The 25-year-old reached the third round in this event last year but has struggled on the clay surface this season, with a second-round exit at the Stuttgart Open last month coupled with a first-round defeat at the Madrid Open 10 days ago.
It was a slow start in the Rome heat with both players taking over 20 minutes to hold their opening two service games before Konta broke for the first time in the fifth game to take a 3-2 lead.
Konta needed over 12 minutes to hold in the sixth to extend her advantage to 4-2 and, after trading the next two games, the Briton eventually took the opening set with her fifth set point on Putintseva’s serve in a hard-fought battle.
The British No.1 became more dominant against the agitated Putintseva and won the first three games of the second set – her fifth in succession – before Konta secured a double-break on the Kazakh’s service to go 4-0 up.
Konta extended her winning run to seven games, despite being delayed for a few minutes after a ball boy suffered from heat exhaustion and picked up a time violation on her serve, before she broke Putintseva for the fifth time to seal a comfortable second set and became the first woman to advance to the third round.
The Briton will take on the winner of Lesia Tsurenko and Venus Williams, who play on Wednesday, for a place in the quarter-finals.
British No.3 Aljaz Bedene, meanwhile, put in a valiant effort against world No.2 Novak Djokovic before falling to a 7-6 (7/2) 6-2 second-round defeat.
he 27-year-old started the match in positive fashion with a break in the opening game but handed that advantage straight back in the next before the pair shared the following 10 games to take the set into a tie-break.
Djokovic dominated the early exchanges to race into a 5-0 lead before Bedene finally got on the board with a powerful forehand but he could not prevent the Serbian from winning the first set.
A break in the first game of the second set put Djokovic in the ascendency and another in the fifth game put the world number two 4-1 up before he won two of the next three games to seal his place in the third round.
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