Murray Unhappy With Movement In Miami Defeat

Andy Murray said that he was surprised with his flat performance Wednesday at the Miami Open presented by Itau after suffering a straights-sets loss to Serbian Dusan Lajovic.

Having won two matches at the BNP Paribas Open and coming into the tournament off the back of encouraging practice sessions at Hard Rock Stadium, the two-time Miami champion sad that he expected better.

“I served pretty well, but the rest of the game was a bit of a problem today. Didn’t really return that well, made a number of errors that obviously I wouldn’t expect to be making,” Murray said of the 6-4, 7-5 defeat.

“I didn’t really feel like I moved particularly well, which is really important for me, something I’ve been doing very well actually in most of the matches this year. So that was probably the thing.

“Some days you obviously don’t hit the ball your best, but my movement wasn’t great today.”

In his first career meeting against World No. 76 Lajovic, Murray said that he also struggled with a change in conditions from Indian Wells.

“I’d been practising pretty well. It’s a very different court here, very bouncy, much faster than last week. Very different to the practice courts and everything.

“The ball was bouncing up a bit higher and I just miss-timed quite a few balls. Sometimes on the slice it was shooting through a little bit more, kind of shanked a couple shots off the slice, as well… I wasn’t expecting to play like that, even based on the last few days because I’ve been decent in practice.”

Murray said that he was yet to decide if he would stay in Miami a little longer to begin preparation for the clay swing but added that he would return to Spain no later than the end of this month, when he will reunite with his family and begin a training block.

Murray has 14 ATP Masters 1000 titles among his 46 career triumphs. His most recent win at this level came in Paris/Bercy in 2016, when he first rose to No. 1 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings.