Fourth-seeded Andy Murray has always had his struggles on clay, and he'd never finished higher at the French Open than last year, reaching the quarterfinals at Roland-Garros. As it turns out, replicating that performance was not in the cards for the Scotsman, as Murray was bounced in straight sets by the no. 15 seed, Tomas Berdych.
As The Guardian deftly explains, Murray's struggles were only exacerbated by difficult conditions, including a rain delay:
Berdych, seeded 15th, won 6-4, 7-5, 6-3 and deserves to go through to the quarter-finals, where he will play the fifth seed, Mikhail Youzhny. They finished in gloom that matched Murray's mood, although no amount of crazy scheduling could be blamed for the Scot's capitulation. He simply could not find the extra gear he needed to subdue an opponent who beat him twice as a teenager and whose concentration was barely disturbed in two hours 6 minutes, spread over most of the evening session, with a 35-minute break for rain.
While Murray said later that he did not want to complain about the conditions or the decision by the tournament organisers to leave them out there like a pair of drenched nightbirds, the break seemed to unsettle him, as did the damp, shifting clay and the soaked, near‑invisible balls.
"I didn't really get frustrated until the end of the second set," he said. "You need to be solid and stable to hang in there. I got myself back into it but struggled when we came back out from the rain delay. But he played a good match."
The winner of the Berdych-Youzhny quarterfinal will meet the winner of top-ranked Roger Federer and Robin Soderling. Or, in other words. Roger Federer.
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Jun 6
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