Defeating No. 13 seed Matteo Berrettini on Tuesday in Australian Open first round required Andy Murray to persevere for four hours and 49 minutes. He even saved a match point when trailed 5-4 in the fifth set.
Afterward, Murray stated, “I’ll be experiencing this evening and tomorrow, but I’m tremendously delighted, really proud of myself.
“Our team and I worked very hard over the past few months to offer me the chance to compete on fields like this, in games like this, and against guys like Matteo. And tonight, it paid off.
Murray ended a five-match Grand Slam losing record against players rated in the top 20 by defeating the No. 14-ranked Italian. In the quarterfinals of Roland Garros in 2017, he defeated No. 9-ranked Kei Nishikori to earn his last victory over a member of the elite at a major tournament.
The British player defeated a Top 20 player for the 199th time in his career (199-138).
Murray also ended Berrettini’s three-match losing run to him.
The 10-point tie-breaker was Murray’s first time playing one, and he described it as “a little odd.” “It feels like you’re still a long way off when you’re up 6-1, 7-1, or whatever. And he made a robust comeback. With the net cable, I just barely got lucky at the very end.
“I thought some of the tennis at the end was great. I don’t know how it looked, but it felt like that playing. He was serving astonishingly and was a terrific competitor; he’s one of the finest on the circuit and consistently battles to the last end.
“I got through with flying colors,”
The tennis was excellent, with just 93 unforced errors between the two players combined 112 victories (Murray 40, Berrettini 72). (Murray 34, Berrettini 59).
The milestones didn’t stop there; Murray’s 50th career victory at the Australian Open made him the seventh player in the Open Era with at least 50 wins in the tournament.
The Australian Open, one of the two majors he hasn’t won, has been Murray’s most reliable of the four tournaments; five of the 11 significant finals he’s made it to have taken place here. In 2010 and 2011, as well as in 2013, 2015, and 2016, he finished second to Federer and Djokovic.