Murray recovers to claim five-set victory

Andy Murray
12 April 2012

Andy Murray produced a repeat of his epic Wimbledon comeback against Richard Gasquet to avoid crashing out of the French Open in the first round.

Murray's nightmare draw looked like living up to its billing when Gasquet led by two sets and a break on Suzanne Lenglen Court.

But, as in their last meeting in the fourth round at SW19 two years ago, the infamously fragile Frenchman suffered a spectacular collapse as fourth seed Murray won 4-6 6-7 (5/7) 6-4 6-2 6-1 in four hours and four minutes.

The 23-year-olds had enjoyed contrasting fortunes since their Wimbledon clash, the Scot establishing himself in the world's top five and his opponent falling to 68th following injury and a ban for inadvertently taking cocaine, but Gasquet won his first ATP title for three years at the Nice Open on Saturday, his 10th victory in a row.

Showing no early signs of the leg injury or fatigue which caused him to ask for Monday afternoon's contest to be delayed until Tuesday, the former world number seven began confidently. He wasted three break points in the fourth but was showing flashes of his brilliant best on the backhand side.

Serving at 5-4 down, Murray double-faulted, Gasquet hit a brilliant backhand winner to gain two set points and the Scot volleyed limply into the net. Murray conceded another break point in the fourth game of the second set but saved that before wasting one himself in the next.

Neither player was serving well and Murray repeatedly smacked himself in the face after his second double-fault handed Gasquet break point in game six before he held on. He was forced to do the same in game 12 to take the set to a tie-break.

That saw Murray twice fight back from mini-breaks - including saving a set point - but he lost the initiative once more and this time Gasquet made him pay. The Scot's pitiful first-serve percentage of 39% from the second set immediately improved but that did not stop him being broken in game five of the third.

The Parisien crowd were now firmly on their man's side, their chants inspiring him to 15-40 on the Murray serve, the Scot gifting Gasquet the second of the two break points. However, the Frenchman immediately handed Murray three break-back points, teasing him by saving two before choking on the third.

He also conceded three more in game eight, a double-fault giving the Scot the opportunity to serve for the set.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in