THE dreich, windy weather at Roland Garros yesterday may have been reminiscent of Scotland but neither of the Scots in action here found the conditions to their liking.
While Jamie Murray and his Australian partner John Peers were unable to find their way past No 7 seeds Marcin Matkowski and Nenad Zimonjic in the third round of the men's doubles, 17-year-old Maia Lumsden was being outgunned amid spits of rain by Anna Blinkova of Russia in the girls' singles.
Before he caught a flight out of Paris to recharge his energies for the grass court season, the elder Murray sibling said he and Peers had ultimately got what they deserved in their 6-4, 7-5 defeat. They remain in contention for a spot in the season-ending ATP World Tour finals in London.
"It wasn't such easy conditions but I don't think either of us really served that well in terms of percentages," said Murray, whose mixed doubles partner Elina Svitolina was a big winner in the singles against Alize Cornet. "They were better than us today, they served better and returned better, so now we need to go home. We have won a lot of matches so far this year, done better at the big events than we did last year, I guess we are going in the right direction and we have a good stretch now on the grass to look forward to."
In particular, Murray said he and Peers were planning to play Stuttgart and Queens, then take a week off before Wimbledon, but he was considering foregoing the mixed doubles at SW19, the competition which he memorably won with Jelena Jankovic back in 2007. "Maybe I don't play mixed, because men play five sets there, and sometimes mixed can feel like you are wasting energy for what you want to play well in. But I will see how I feel."
Lumsden wasn't feeling so hot either following her 6-2, 6-1 defeat against Blinkova, the big-hitting 16-year-old from Moscow. The Glaswegian, who has been working with veteran coach Nick Bolletieri in Florida after a stint in Sven Groeneveld's academy in Amsterdam, actually earned 12 break points to her opponents 10 but was unable to capitalise.
"She is a really strong player with powerful shots and I felt like I was quite rushed," said the 17-year-old. "I didn't have a lot of time on the ball. I felt like I was in quite a lot of her service games but I just couldn't get the break points. The games felt closer than the score."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article