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Andy Murray suffered one of his worst Grand Slam losses in a 63, 62, 61 drubbing to Rafael Nadal today in the French Open semifinals.
Murray was playing in his second career French Open but had no answer at all for Rafael Nadal who now leads the Scot 6-0 on clay courts winning 14 of 16 sets.
“It was a bad, bad day,” said Murray who has never won an clay semifinal match. “You can go out there with all the tactics in the world, but when he’s hitting the ball like that, it’s very difficult to hit the ball where you want to.
“He was hitting extremely hard, extremely heavy, returning well, and was hitting it well on the run. That’s the toughest match I have played against him. I’ll need to bounce back quickly from it, because I’m not particularly happy with the way I played today.
“Today I was mishitting a lot of balls. It was incredibly frustrating. I wanted to play better and better as the match went on. In some ways you start trying too hard, and it doesn’t always appear that way. But you want to do stuff too badly, and you end up making more mistakes and things get worse.”
Murray came into the semifinal after two five set wins in his last three matches in Paris, but wasn’t sure if that was the issue.
“I don’t know, to be honest,” Murray replied when asked if the long matches took their toll. “If it was, I’ve only got myself to blame, because I was in control of a lot of the matches that went longer than maybe they should have been. So if that did have anything to do with it, it was completely my fault.
But the effort in Paris and the results thus far after back surgery last year still gives him some encouragement as he looks toward the grass season and his Wimbledon title defense.
“The grass will obviously help me,” Murray said. “It’s a surface I have always enjoyed playing on. I think it’s been my most successful surface over my career. I’m really looking forward to Wimbledon especially. It’s only two and a half weeks away, so I don’t have too long to wait.
“I expect to play well there,” said Murray. “I’m really looking forward to going back. I think it will give me a lot of positive energy.”
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