(June 28, 2013) No. 2 seed and 2012 London Olympic champion Andy Murray continued his straight sets streak by defeating Tommy Robredo 6-2, 6-4, 7-5 to reach the fourth round under a closed roof at Wimbledon on Friday.
Meanwhile, two days ago several former No. 1 players fell, and most of the conquerors could not back up their dramatic upsets.
Murray is aiming to become the first man from Great Britain to win Wimbledon since Fred Perry in 1936. He spoke about the pressure on him with so many top seeds out including Roger Federer who was in his half of the draw.
“I think there’s a lot more pressure on me now with them being out,” Murray said. “I mean, I don’t read the papers and stuff. But there are papers in the locker room, so you see some of the headlines and stuff. It’s not that helpful,” Murray said smiling.
“But, yeah, you need to be professional enough to not let that stuff bother you and just concentrate on each match. I think I did a good job of that today. I played well, my best match of the tournament so far. “
As for those players who contributed to all of the upsets on Wimbledon’s Wild Wednesday:
No. 116 Sergiy Stakhovsky who took out seven-time champion Roger Federer lost to No. 37 Jurgen Melzer 6-2, 2-6, 7-5, 6-3.
“If someone would ask me, Would you rather beat Roger and lose in next round, I would always take it, obviously, “ Stakhovsky said.
“I’m just a little disappointed that I got so blinded by the game I produced with Roger that I kept going with the same game I played against Jurgen, which was just not right. If I would be just a bit more smarter on that court, I could have been a winner today, I think.”
“I would say I could possibly be not prepared only mentally, because everybody expects or you expect yourself to play better after you beat Roger. And the only thing you don’t want to happen is to lose next round. It’s actually what happened, because you’re trying to avoid it, it always come to you.”
Michelle Larcher de Brito who took out Maria Sharapova, was taken down by No. 104 Karin Knapp.
“It was a fantastic win, obviously,” Larcher de Brito said. “It gave me an incredible amount of confidence and it proved to myself that, yeah, I can be there.”
Reigning Junior champion Eugenie Bouchard who dismissed Ana Ivanovic on Wednesday, was shown the door by 19th seed Carla Suarez Navarro 7-5, 6-2.
“Well, for sure it went differently than I hoped,” said the young Canadian. “She definitely played really well, I thought. She was very consistent. She was being aggressive ‑ more aggressive than me ‑ so she was controlling the points. I think I could have ‑ should have ‑ done more to try to control the points. Instead she did.”
Bouchard spoke about the difficulty coming off the high from her victory Ivanovic. “I think that was in the back of my mind, yeah. It’s a totally different situation: Not on Centre Court, not against a big, big player.
But I knew that ahead of time. I tried to prepare like it was just another match, which it was. It was still on a nice court.
“But, yeah, I just think I didn’t play as well as I know I can.”
Dustin Brown who stunned Lleyton Hewitt, los to Adrin Mannarino 6‑4, 6‑2, 7‑5.
“I go out there and try to play my tennis as best as possible,” Brown said.
“Today didn’t work out as well as I would have liked it to. I played Adrian a month ago. It was a little similar match. A little faster. Both of us held serves. Especially on the outside it’s really difficult to return a serve. Most of the time you’re guessing, which also gives him no pressure on the deuce side, because even if he loses a point there, I find it very difficult to return the serve especially on the ad side.
“So he’s playing free. He came up with a lot of good returns right in front of my feet. Couldn’t pick them up.”
“Of course, I’m sad that I lost,” Brown said “On the other side, it’s been a great week also. I shouldn’t forget that. When I came here, I was in the quallies, I thought, I lost two rounds in qualifying in Nottingham, what am I expecting to do here? If someone would have told me from the beginning, Sign here, you get the third‑round prize money and points and you are going to win five matches, I would have taken the deal.”
According to the International Tennis Federation this fortnight at Wimbledon had the worst performance by the men’s and women’s top 10 seeds. A total of only 10 of the top seeds – 6 men and 4 women had reached the third round of The Championships.
It is the joint-worst performance by Top 10 seeds at any Grand Slam event in the Open Era. The previous fewest women’s Top 10 seeds to reach the third round at a major was 5 seeds at 2001 Roland Garros. The previous fewest women’s Top 10 seeds to reach the third round at Wimbledon was 6 seeds in 1996 and 2000.