Andy Murray made a successful return to the ATP tour after 3 weeks off, the last time the Scot hit a tennis ball in a competitive match was his defeat in the final of the Australian Open.
Murray playing in the opening day of the Dubai Tennis Championships eased by his first round opponent Russia’s Igor Kunitsyn – Murray winning the match 6-2 6-3.
The world number 4 will now take on either Andreas Seppi or Janko Tipsarevic in the second round clash.
With a straight sets victory to 2 and 3, you would normally expect a 1 hour match, but the matched lasted closer to two hours mainly down to the colossal 34-point second game that lasted nearly half an hour before Murray finally won it on his 9th break point, a total of 14 deuces in the game. If you were wondering you can win a set in little as 24 points (6 love games) or even win a set 6-2 in less than 34 points. After that break of serve Murray did indeed go on to win the set 6-2. That epic game which lasted 24 minutes and 30 seconds, is believed to be one of the longest games in the Open Era.
His Russian opponent, Igor Kunitsyn, ranked 111th in the world, faught back from dropping that opening set by breaking in the opening game of the second, but in typical Murray style the Scot immeadiatly broke back, after that the match was in little doubt as Murray went to secure another break and take the second set 6-2.
The only negative aspect of the match for Murray was that he appeared to have one or two physical issues, after his win Murray said
My ankle was sore at the start of the match and I was really out of breath early on. I have not practised that much, or trained that much and there were a lot of long rallies….You don’t think that at 1-0 it could make a huge difference to the match, but I think it did. I’ve never played a game like that before.
Second seed (but really first seed after the withdrawal of Roger Federer through illness) Novak Djokovic also made it through to the second round beating Guillermo Garcia-Lopez 6-4 6-4.