There is something about Dubai that does not sit well with Andy Murray, it seems.
The world No.4 has not made it past the quarter-finals in three attempts and yesterday he flirted with disaster before scraping his way into round two of the Dubai Duty Free Championships.
Unheralded German Michael Berrer gave him all sorts of problems before he clinched a 6-3, 4-6, 6-4 victory but the Scot had just as much trouble with his own health as he did with the world No.116.
"I've been feeling average," said Murray after a match played in temperatures approaching 30ºC. "Most of the years I've come here I've never felt that well. I don't know why, but that just always has been the case.
"At the start of the match, I didn't feel great. I felt like I wanted to vomit. I don't know if I had drunk too much or over-hydrated. I cut down and was not drinking that much at the changeovers in the second and third sets and I felt much better."
Murray's three previous visits to Dubai have not exactly been covered in glory. He lost in the quarter-finals to Nikolay Davydenko in 2008, pulled out with a virus at the same stage in 2009 and in 2010 he lost to Serbia's Janko Tipsarevic and was later criticised for admitting that he had been trying out some new things in his game.
Last year, he pulled out of the event before it had begun citing a wrist injury so the organisers, who have reportedly splashed out a lot of appearance money to the top players in the field, will have been pleased to see their No.3 seed advance.
Having spent the past couple of weeks in Florida training with his coach Ivan Lendl, Murray ought to have been fairly used to the warm temperatures but he struggled throughout his match against the tenacious German.
"It was very up and down," said Murray, who is in the same half of the draw as top seed Novak Djokovic, the man who edged him in the semi-finals of the Australian Open in January. "I was twice up a break in the third but he fought back. I was feeling a bit sick for a while in the sun. I am just happy to get through."
His next opponent looked likely to be Davydenko, who has shown signs of regaining top form after a recent slump, but the Russian let slip a 4-1 lead in the final set to lose 6-4, 5-7, 6-4 to the Swiss qualifier Marco Chiudinelli, better known as one of Roger Federer's best friends on tour.
Murray has never played the Swiss but if Chiudinelli needs inspiration for today's second-round match, perhaps he will have got it from watching Federer cruise into round two with a 6-0, 7-6 win over the Frenchman Michael Llodra.
Federer, who won the title in Rotterdam just more than a week ago, dropped just seven points in the first set and next plays Feliciano Lopez, of Spain.
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