Masterful Murray overwhelms Simon

Published on Wednesday 14 May 2008 23:24

ANDY Murray matched his best clay-court performance by reaching the third round of the Hamburg Masters with a 6-3, 6-3 victory over Gilles Simon.

The British No1, who also reached the third round in Monte Carlo last month, put in a dominant showing and looked in control throughout the match.

Murray began in the best possible fashion by breaking Simon's opening service game thanks to a trademark precision lob.

The Scot followed that up by holding his own serve comfortably, but the Frenchman immediately hit back with a love game of his own.

Simon won the only previous meeting between the pair in Rome last year in three sets and would have been expected to provide Murray with a stern test. But, a day before his 21st birthday, the world No14 was clearly in a hurry and quickly racked up another break of serve to establish a 4-1 lead.

Murray had looked impressive in his 6-4, 6-1 first-round victory over Dmitry Tursunov on Monday with the harder Hamburg clay more to the Scot's liking. Simon managed to stem the tide by taking his first break point to reduce the arrears to a single break.

Murray had a chance to re- establish the gap in the next game but Simon's groundstrokes were beginning to find their mark and the Frenchman held firm to make it 4-3.

Murray held his next service game and a forehand winner brought up two set points as Simon again struggled to dominate on his serve. The world No35 saved one with a thumping forehand, but Murray found the baseline at 30-40 to seal the set 6-3.

The Scot then won his third game in a row to get off the mark in the second set before Simon, who has two ATP Tour titles to his name, levelled.

The 23-year-old Frenchman was showing the potential to trouble Murray with his power but too many times unforced errors let the 15th seed off the hook. A brilliant drop shot and angled winner took Murray to deuce in Simon's next service game, but this time he could not capitalise.

The pair traded service holds but Simon's improved form came to a shuddering halt in the eighth game as a series of errors followed by an exquisite drop shot from Murray handed the Scot a 5-3 lead.

It looked like Murray would waste his first opportunity to clinch victory when he slipped to 0-40, but five successive points wrapped things up as the match ended, like so many of the points, with a Simon error.