Andy Murray barged through to the second week of Wimbledon with an impressive straight-sets victory over Tommy Robredo this evening.
Last year’s runner-up saw off the threat of the Spanish 32nd seed, winning 6-2 6-4 7-5 under the Centre Court roof to extend his grass-court winning streak to 14 matches.
Murray faces a fourth-round meeting against either Viktor Troicki or 20th seed Mikhail Youzhny on Monday. The latter is the highest-seeded player left in the Brit's side of the draw, which saw early shock early exits for the likes of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. "I think there's a lot more pressure on me now with them being out," Murray said.
“I don’t read the papers and stuff, but there are papers in the locker room, so you see some of the headlines. “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.” Poland’s Jerzy Janowicz could be a big threat to Murray, but they cannot meet until the semi-finals.
Big-serving Janowicz overcame 15th seed Nicolas Almagro, also on Centre Court, by a 7-6 (8/6) 6-3 6-4 margin, while Dustin Brown could not match the heroics that saw him knock out Lleyton Hewitt as he exited to Adrian Mannarino.
The other third-round clash saw Roger Federer's conqueror Sergiy Stakhovsky go down 6-2 2-6 7-5 6-3 to Jurgen Melzer.
“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,” Ukrainian Stakhovsky said.
“If I could have been just a bit more smarter on that court, I could have been a winner today.”
Much of the men’s singles action today came in the form of second-round matches postponed due to bad weather.
On Court One, fourth seed David Ferrer came through a tough clash with fellow Spaniard Roberto Bautista Agut.
Just weeks after defeat to another compatriot, Rafael Nadal, in the French Open final, the 31-year-old clay-court expert took just under three hours to win through 6-3 3-6 7-6 (7/4) 7-5.
An unhappy Grigor Dimitrov exited as the weather played havoc with his match against Grega Zemlja. The pair were hauled off court yesterday evening because of the rain with Dimitrov set to serve to stay in a deciding set at 9-8 down.
The drizzle of today stopped them returning until 1.30pm on Court Three, two hours later than scheduled, and as soon as they put a foot on the grass the rain started again.
Dimitrov took a fall in the opening game to offer up a match point to his opponent and, even though he saved that, he was broken the next time he had the serve and lost 11-9.
Tommy Haas, Alexandr Dolgopolov and Jeremy Chardy won the other outstanding second-round matches today.
