ANDY Murray believes he is in for another tough assignment when he faces Austria's Jurgen Melzer in the US Open third round, but insists he has the mental toughness to come through it.
The British No 1 and world No 6 reached the third round of the year's final grand slam for the third time in a row when he defeated France's Michael Llodra, ranked 38th in the world, in four sets on Thursday.
Melzer is ranked 10 places lower th
an Llodra but shares a number of his attributes, meaning another tricky test for the 21-year-old Scot today in a match scheduled for second on Grandstand Court.
"Again, he's a lefty, comes to the net a lot, plays aggressive," Murray said of Melzer, who crushed Jiri Vanek of the Czech Republic 6-0, 6-2, 6-2 on Thursday morning. He won really quickly, he's a tough guy to play against, just, again, like Roger (Federer]. He doesn't give you too much rhythm.
"But I feel like I'm playing well just now. I'm confident and I look forward to the match."
Murray will do so with the belief that he negotiated a difficult second-round challenge from Llodra not just tactically and physically but also mentally.
Facing a big-serving left-hander and some debatable line calls that may have in previous years brought out the worst in Murray temperament, the sixth seed was pleased to have kept his focus on the task at hand, twice breaking back immediately in the fourth set on the way to victory.
"The tough thing is when I won that third set and then I'm up 30-0 on my serve. At and 30-30 I hit a clean winner up the line and it gets called out and you get broken, it's like, you put in so much hard work to get the initiative, to get the momentum, and then all of a sudden you're behind in the fourth and you need to come back.
"And the most pleasing thing for me was each time I got broken in the fourth set was that I came back straight away.
"I thought that the whole match was tough mentally, and I dealt with it well." Murray also recognised he did not let his frustration with the line judges spill over into a self-defeating tantrum, restricting his protests to restrained discussions with the chair umpire even when there was a perceived injustice.
"I didn't let any of it linger on too long," he said. "I said what had to be said. I felt if there are calls like that and it's one of the biggest tournaments in the world, it's not nice to have that sort of lack of confidence in a line judge or an umpire.
"You want to just be able to go and play, and I think for a little bit of the match neither of us felt that comfortable with the calling. So that's what makes it difficult.
"But I was happy with the way I came back from all of the different situations that he put me in, and I managed to come out on top."
Murray and Ross Hutchins came unstuck in the second round of the men's doubles last night when they were knocked out by top seeds Daniel Nestor of Canada and Nenad Zimonjic of Serbia.
The unseeded British pair had come back from a set down to level the match but with neither side able to break the deadlock it took a tiebreak to settle the match – Nestor and Zimonjic pulling through 7-5, 3-6, 7-6 (7-2) on court six.
Murray and Hutchins had defeated Thai twin brothers Sanchai and Sonchat Ratiwatana 6-3, 1-6, 6-4 on Tuesday in their first match together since April.
They looked poised to take control at 3-3 in the final set when they earned a triple break point, but the Nestor serve produced five straight winning points to keep the top seeds in the hunt.
At 5-6 and 15-40 down, Hutchins produced a rescue act of his own as he served to save the match, forcing his way back into contention and winning the game to force a tiebreak.
That, however, proved to be a one-sided affair, Nestor and Zimonjic racing to victory and into the third round.
The full article contains 735 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
