JAMIE Murray admits he is looking forward to a rest – if not to getting on the grass – after his French Open hopes were snuffed out in the second round yesterday.
Murray and Brazilian partner Bruno Soares were beaten 6-4, 5-7, 6-4 by Maximo Gonzalez of Argentina and Nicolas Jarry of Chile.
Trailing 3-2 in a match held over from the previous night because of rain, Murray and Soares recovered from the loss of the first set to level the match but fell after the Scot lost his serve in the decider.
“We had some momentum going into the third set, we had a chance at 2-2 and didn’t get it and I lost my serve in the next game and that was it,” Murray said. “It was frustrating because we got ourselves back into it and played some good stuff but we didn’t create enough chances in the third set.
“It’s tough, playing guys like that. If we play them at Wimbledon we’d chop them but on clay there is much more chance to serve, stay back, more time in the points, so guys like that have a chance to be successful. We need to do better.”
Though they reached the semi-finals in Rome last month, Murray and Soares have won just two other matches on clay, including their first-round win here. The good news for Murray is that the clay season is over. The bad news is he doesn’t think much of grass.
“It’s nice playing at home [but] I don’t really like playing on grass, overly. It’s probably quite nice for my style but everything’s so fast, it’s not really so much fun because the serve is so dominant. It’s more fun playing on clay because there’s more rallies, grass is just kind of like bang, bang, bang. But it’s fun playing at home, obviously.”
Murray said he was unlikely to play an event in the week after the French Open, a week when his brother Andy, is tentatively scheduled to return from almost a year off because of injury.
“Bruno’s going home because he’s having his second kid, so he’s not playing that week,” Murray said. “I’ll probably take a break for a few days, just practise a bit and play at Queen’s [in the Fever-Tree Championships]. I’ve been travelling a lot this year, it’s nice to be at home now for a chunk of time.”
Heather Watson also lost out in her doubles with Tatjana Maria going down 6-1, 2-6, 7-5, to Barbora Krejcikova and Katerina Siniakova.
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