Andy Murray gave a positive assessment of his week in Rome after losing in the second round of the Italian Open doubles with Liam Broady.
The British pair were late alternates and pulled off a comeback win over Australian duo Max Purcell and Luke Saville in round one before going down 6-3 6-4 to eighth seeds Kevin Krawietz and Horia Tecau.
Murray travelled to Rome primarily to practise with some of the world’s top players after recovering from a groin problem suffered in his sleep ahead of the Miami Open in March.
The Scot told the PA news agency: “It was good to get a couple of matches for both of us after Liam didn’t get into qualifying here and then obviously I was here practising but I knew as the week went on it was going to be a little bit harder to get match practice because most of the guys who lost would have been leaving.”
Murray’s practise partners have included world number one Novak Djokovic, and he was happy to learn more about where his level is ahead of an expected singles return in either Geneva or Lyon next week.
“Practise has been good,” said the Scot, who is also waiting to find out whether he will be given a French Open wild card.
“Today didn’t feel that great on the court, I didn’t play that well in comparison to yesterday. The other guys served well, which made it difficult.
“But it was good to feel what it was like in match conditions again after quite a long period for me.
“I got four practises with top-20 players, which is good. If we hadn’t got into the doubles I maybe would have got one more before heading off but I got a couple of matches instead.
“It was positive, I’m happy I came over here, learned a bit about my game and where I’m at.
“It’s totally different training conditions over here and being around the tournament like this than it is at home so (I’m) glad we came to do it.
“I did pretty well physically for the first points and practise sets at this level for a long time. I was happy with that and hopefully will keep building the next few weeks.”
Broady has been the form British player of the season so far along with Dan Evans and Cameron Norrie, climbing to a career high of 145 in the world rankings.
The 27-year-old said: “It was a pleasure, it was good fun. After the match yesterday, it meant a lot more to me than I thought it would.
“Obviously I’d prefer to play singles but, to have won a doubles match at the Rome Masters and to have done it with Andy, it was quite a nice feeling.
“We obviously would have liked to have done better than we did after getting rolled today but that’s the way sport is sometimes.”
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 here