What Murray accomplished in five dramatic hours

the scotsman andy murray35 years old and announced his retirement from the same competition in 2019, is back to add a new victory to australia tomorrownumber 50, in a first round match that lasted 4 hours and 54 minutes and in which he defeated the Italian. Matteo Berrettini, thirteenth seed, by 6-3, 6-3, 4-6, 6-7 (7) and 7-6 (6).

“I am very proud of myself. I worked a lot with my team to be able to play like this in these types of scenarios”, he commented on court after closing the game with a cut return that touched the net tape and bounced twice on the Italian side.

This ended a battle that lasted almost five hours and in which an aggressive Berrettini, who connected 31 direct aces and 72 ‘winners’, was unable to break the security of the Scotsman, who made 17 unforced errors less than to his rival. Murray saved a match point when he served in the fifth set at 4-5.

Murray won the first two sets with one and two breaks per set. In the second he did not concede a single ‘break’ point.

But in the next two the Italian could not come close to serving and restored parity.

Murray, with a bloody knee and signs of fatigue, held the court in the fifth—and fought for every ball, even saving a match point, before gasping for air in the tiebreaker game. They went ahead 5-0 and eventually won 10-6.

With this epic victory, the Scottish player equaled his record from last year, when he came second to the Japanese taro danieland will have a chance to improve it in a match that will also face the Italian Fabio Fognini or in australian Thanasi Kokkinakis.

The man from Glasgow became the fifth man in the Open Era to reach fifty victories on the banks of the Yarra and joined a privileged group consisting of the Swiss Roger Federer (102), the Serbian Novak Djokovic (82), the Spanish Rafa Nadal (77) and Swede Stefan Edberg (56).