US Open: Murray ready for a scrap against battler Melzer

Published on Friday 29 August 2008 14:21

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 number one and world number six 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 than Llodra but shares a number of his attributes, meaning another tricky match for the 21-year-old Scot at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Centre in New York on tomorrow.

"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."