Not a match to raise the roof but just what Andy Murray needed | Richard Williams

With sterner tests to come, the British No1 will be grateful he was given a decent work-out by Daniel Gimeno-Traver Just what the boy Murray needed. A stiffish test for over an hour, followed by a cruise through to the second round. Full marks to Daniel Gimeno-Traver, a 25-year-old from Valencia who had previously won only two matches on grass, for providing the No4 seed with a useful opening-day work-out under the retractable roof and for giving the crowd 70 minutes of admirable tennis before his mind and limbs grew tired. The rain had come at one minute past five o’clock, with the women’s singles match between Francesca Schiavione and Jelena Dokic still in the balance on the Centre Court as the roof was given an early opportunity to do its £80m-worth of stuff. Two years ago Andy Murray and his fourth-round opponent Stanislas Wawrinka became the first players to contest a match in the new weather-proof SW19 showpiece. Murray, who was on his way to his first appearance in the Wimbledon semi-finals, took that match in five sets, with somewhat greater difficulty than he experienced on Monday. When the No4 seed and the Spaniard ranked No59 in the world made their appearance, once Schiavone and Dokic had completed their business, the lights were shining from beneath the translucent covering and the air was humid. Knights of the realm in the royal box included Jackie Stewart, Clive Woodward and Terry Wogan, along with Angela Mortimer, a British singles champion at Wimbledon in the long, long ago. In the only previous meeting between the two men, in 2009, Murray had won in straight sets on a hard court in Gimeno-Traver’s home town. Now the position was reversed, with the Spaniard venturing on to the Scot’s adopted turf and giving a good account of himself in the opening stages. This is Murray’s sixth visit to Wimbledon as a senior since his debut in 2005 – he missed the 2007 tournament with a wrist injury – and it will not have escaped his attention that his progress has taken the form of an unbroken upward curve: third round, fourth round, quarter-final, then consecutive semi-finals in the past two years, with his path to the final denied first by Andy Roddick and then by Rafael Nadal. Defeat in another semi-final, at the age of 24, would represent the consolidation of his known status, if not the satisfaction of moving up another level. Elimination at an earlier stage in his quarter of the draw would necessarily be at the hands of a player outside the top four, a Gaël Monfils or a Richard Gasquet, or maybe Roddick, the eighth seed, and would involve a significant disappointment. Murray dropped only two points in his first four service games, while Gimeno-Traver was holding his own serve with considerably more difficulty, fending off a break point in the fourth game. Serving at 4-4, however, the Scot suddenly lost control of his forehand, saving two break points before losing a third and finding himself unable to prevent the set slipping out of his hands at the first time of asking. “He deserved to be up at that point,” Murray said afterwards, and it was indeed a very enjoyable and competitive spectacle for the crowd. Gimeno-Traver, the son of a chemist and a nurse, is said in his official biography to have taken up the game at two years of age – his more celebrated opponent delayed his first efforts until after his third birthday – and he was matching Murray shot for shot, covering the court with springy athleticism and mixing up the pace and angles to considerable effect. When he took the first point of the seventh game in the second set against Murray’s serve, with a beautifully manufactured low forehead lob that hit the baseline and scurried away, the court rang with warm applause. The crowd were showing their appreciation of what was, at that stage, still a proper contest, but a couple of minutes later the evening took a decisive turn when Murray exploited a series of errors and made the most of a third break point before brusquely closing out the set with a service game that included three aces from the deuce court, each one scorching the centre line at around 125mph. Here was a hint of the consistent menace he will no doubt need in the later rounds. The best of Murray came as he broke Gimeno-Traver again in the opening game of the third set, again needing threebreak points to achieve his aim but also producing a running forehand down the line and a marvellously judged drop shot. At that point his opponent caved in and hardly won another point, never mind a game. At 4-0 in the third the Spaniard called for treatment to a thigh injury, probably the result of a fall in the sixth game of the second set, and the remainder of the match constituted little more than an exhibition. It ended with a gentle exchange of angled volleys and drop shots, Murray delivering the coup de grâce with a lethal delicacy that he may not have occasion to display in what will surely be the sterner contests to come. Andy Murray Wimbledon 2011 Wimbledon Tennis Richard Williams guardian.co.uk

Posted by on June 20, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.