Andy Murray, a three-time Grand Slam Champion, lost in the first round of the Monte Carlo Masters this week. He priorly had made it to the semi-finals at this competition in 2009, 2011 and 2016. Additionally, it was the first time that he competed on Monaco clay since 2017.
Also, British number one Cameron Norrie was eliminated after his first round match while Jack Draper came back with a win despite just having an injury.
Alex de Minaur won against Andy Murray in the second round at the Masters 1,000 match. He did this by committing only 8 mistakes while Murray had 26. This was the third time De Minaur has beaten Murray on the ATP Tour and he hadn’t won a Masters 1,000 match yet this year before. Now, De Minaur will go up against Jan-Lennard Struff from Germany in the next round.
When Murray and De Minaur were playing on the clay court for the first time in 2023, it wasn’t so good for Murray as De Minaur was dominating by winning the first set within 35 minutes. Later, Murray got angry at the umpire when his hat fell off during a point and he wanted to stop play but the umpire didn’t. This made him confused and caused errors which allowed De Minaur to easily win the match later.
Monday, a tennis match was played between Norrie, who is ranked 13th in the world, and Francisco Cerundolo from Argentina.
Norrie didn’t do very well because he only made 8 winning shots and 18 mistakes which were all his own doing.
Francisco came out on top as he won the game 6-3 and 6-4. The most important mistake that cost Norrie the match was when he missed a forehand shot in the 9th game of the second set. Francisco is only 24 while Norrie is 27 years old.
Norrie began the season with a great record of 21 wins out of 25 matches. However, he lost his first game at the Miami Open last month when he was beaten by French player Gregoire Barrere.
Another Briton, Draper, won against an Argentinian named Sebastian Baez – 6-3 7-5 – which qualified him to face Hubert Hurkacz of Poland in round two. He is ranked 10th overall.
Draper, 21-years-old, had to stop playing during a match against the world’s second best player Carlos Alcaraz in Indian Wells last month due to an abdominal injury. He then decided not to continue playing in the Miami Open because he didn’t want make his injury worse.
His game today against Baez in Monte Carlo was a challenge but Draper managed to get away with it as he saved 11 out of 12 break points while taking 3 of his own 4 chances.
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