Murray ousted by Bellucci in Madrid

 

Originally published on: 06/05/11 10:07

Andy Murray suffered his fifth defeat in his past nine matches to bow out of the Mutua Madrid Open in the third round.

The world No.4 lost 6-4 6-2 to Tomaz Bellucci in his first career contest with the Brazilian.

“I was disappointed with my performance because I started the match not bad but didn’t get better. That’s disappointing,” said the 23-year-old Scot.

“But I’ve got to look at the week as a whole and be realistic. I was coming back from an elbow injury and that is never easy for tennis players. I’m happy that physically I’ve progressed.”

Murray won the Madrid tournament in 2008 – when it was still played on hard courts – and reached the quarter-finals in the tournament’s first two years on clay, but this week proved unable to find the form that had taken him to the Monte Carlo semi-finals in April.

Bellucci, meanwhile, advanced to his first ATP Masters 1000 quarter-final by virtue of his maiden scalp of a top 5 player.

“It means a lot,” said Bellucci, who had beaten Fernando Verdasco for his first top 10 win in Acapulco earlier this year. “Like [Gustavo Kuerten] said, no Brazilian player has won against a top 5 player in a long time so I am very happy to have been the one to do it.”

Bellucci next faces seventh seed Tomas Berdych in the quarter-finals, while Robin Soderling and Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Michael Llodra and David Ferrer and Novak Djokovic will face off in the remaining clashes.

Djokovic equalled Ivan Lendl’s record of 29 matches unbeaten at the start of the 1986 season with a 6-1 6-2 victory over Gullermo Garcia-Lopez in just 52 minutes.

The scintillating Serb faces a tricky task in stretching his winning streak to 30 matches in the last eight, having lost all three of his past encounters to Ferrer.

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