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The fans are enjoying his elegant game, but Murray must step up a gear

احدث اجدد واروع واجمل واشيك The fans are enjoying his elegant game, but Murray must step up a gear

Andy Murray's tally of only 12 games conceded from the first two rounds of the Australian Open looks mightily accomplished - until you compare it to that of Rafael Nadal.

The world No 1 has lost only four, and the comparison of these two impressive numbers rather encapsulates the unfortunate situation facing the 23-year-old Scot at this stage of his career.

Great Scot: Andy celebrates beating Marchenko in straight sets to ease though to the third round

Great Scot: Andy celebrates beating Marchenko in straight sets to ease though to the third round

He can play to an extremely high level and be making improvements, but there is always this wondrous Spaniard, or a Swiss legend, standing in his way.

If Murray has played with admirable efficiency to date, then Nadal has looked little short of awesome.




Handy Andy: Murray signs autographs for the crowd

Admittedly neither has played anyone great so far, and both had first round opponents who ended up retiring with injury.

On Thursday, Murray beat Ukraine's Ilya Marchenko 6-1, 6-3, 6-3 while Nadal allowed American Ryan Sweeting just the four games.

Now Murray plays one of the many Spaniards in the Mallorcan's slipstream, world No 32 Guillermo Garcia Lopez, who he beat in straight sets at Queen's Club in 2009.

A neat baseliner with a pleasing backhand who is at a career high ranking, Murray will probably beat him again and take one step closer to a possible semi-final meeting with Nadal as he attempts to win a fourth straight Grand Slam.

If that happens one player he will not be up against in the fourth round will be the returning US Open champion Juan Martin Del Potro, who was beaten in the final evening match over four sets by Cypriot Marcos Baghdatis.

Garcia-Lopez is one of those Murray can get past with his regulation baseline game, the kind he applied to defeating the cocksure Marchenko, who swung adventurously but with all the intelligence you might expect of someone who wears a baseball cap back to front.

Murray enjoyed the raucous atmosphere of playing on the Margaret Court Arena, the No 3 stadium at Melbourne Park where seating is unticketed and first come-first served, and into which packed a supportive crowd of expatriates and travelling fans.

Handy Andy: Murray signs autographs for the crowd



Strong following: fans cheer on Murray as he books his place in the third round of the Aussie Open




Strong following: fans cheer on Murray as he books his place in the third round of the Aussie Open

The atmosphere was further aided by both players' annoyance at a succession of poor line calls with no Hawkeye to correct them.

In truth he did not treat them to a vintage display, and declined to use the occasion to try out the more expansive game that will be needed should he reach the bigger challenges next week.

Murray, whose serve was in good order, explained that it had been hard to do that against gung-ho opponents in the early rounds: 'It's been quite tough coming up against guys who go for huge shots early in the rally, which makes it hard for me to dictate. But I've still won comfortably.
'With Lopez he is very solid, doesn't make many mistakes and doesn't make it easy for you, but he doesn't hit that big a ball so hopefully I'll be able to dictate a bit more. I'll make him do some running.'
Alicante-based Garcia-Lopez believes he will have a chance, saying: 'Sometimes you can't play when it's against Roger Federer because it's too fast, but against Andy at least will let me play.'
Nadal, who has been hitting the ball with such depth and power that he looks virtually unplayable, has a fascinating third round against the lone Australian survivor, 18-year-old Bernard Tomic.
A Germany-born Croatian immigrant, Tomic looks set to be the most interesting player to emerge in a long while.
He has an instinctive feel for the game like Murray and caresses the ball in the most unmodern way rather than smacking the living daylights out of it.
His irascible father John is straight out of central casting when it comes to driven tennis parenting and the family have already had several clashes with the sport's authorities in Australia.
However, given that their tennis is in even more of a mess than their cricket there is little choice other than to try and rub along together and the boy certainly has talent. But Nadal will assuredly go marching on.
It was a decent day all round for the Murray clan with recently-married and steadily reviving brother Jamie enjoying his best Grand Slam result in a couple of seasons, teaming up with Xavier Malisse to beat ninth seeds Dick Norman and Wesley Moodie 6-4, 6-0.


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