It would not have been how he wanted his first competitive singles match in nearly two years on grass to have went, but Andy Murray is through to the third round of the 2008 Artois Championships at Queens Club after his opponent, Sebastien Grosjean, retired with an injury after just two games.

Murray broke the Frenchman in the first game after the former two time finalist at Queens club, Grosjean double faulted on break point down. Grosjean had earlier in the game saved two break points.

After the opening game, Grosjean, called for the trainer for his left thigh. After a lengthy on court treatment, the French returned to the match with heavy strapping on his left thigh.

Murray proceeded to run off 3 aces and Sebastien Grosjean was forced to call it a day after only 2 games. The decision to enter the doubles is now looking to be a wise move as he was able to get some valuable match practise on the grass last night in his victory with Venezuelan mate Daniel Vallverdu over the French pairing of Richard Gasquet and Nicolas Mahut. After today’s match Murray said,

I would have rather to have won the match normally. You get a bit more confidence from that. I got a good hour, hour and 15 minutes on the court last night for the doubles, which helped, and I felt pretty comfortable on the shots that I did hit in that match, which was good.

The British Number 1 and world number 11, missed 4 months of last years campaign which included the whole grass court season because of a wrist injury. Murray will now meet either Andreas Seppi or Ernests Gulbis in the third round, on paper neither player should trouble Murray, the ties should heat up in the quarter finals though, were he will likely meet 4 time queens club champion Andy Rodick.

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Britain’s Daniel Evans got his first taste of the big time in the first round and it didn’t take long to show that the future of British tennis as long way to go yet. Belgium’s Xavier Malisse made short work of Evans thrashing him 6-1 6-1 in just 42 minutes.

Evans should not feel to unhappy with his work today although Malisse is only ranked 239 in the world, this former Wimbledon semi finalist has been out for much of last year with a serious wrist injury. A result like this though could actually damage Evans confidence and the LTA may be have thrown in him in too quickly to a big event liek this, it is important now that Evans uses this experience as spring board to advance in coming years.

Today Andy Murray will begin his Queens Club campaign when he steps on court against French veteran Sebastien Grosjean.

This week will mark three years that Andy Murray has been a professional Player when in 2005 he burst onto the scene at the Stella Artois Queens Club event beating Santiago Ventura and Taylor Dent, before being knocked out by Thomas Johansson.

Despite the three years Murray has served on the tour Sebastien Grosjean and the young Scot have never met. Strangely enough these two actually partnered each other at Queens in the doubles back in 2006. They managed one victory before losing to the world number 1 pairing the Bryan brothers.

The 30 year old Grosjean has had great success on grass over the years, he is a two time finalist at Queens and a 2 time Wimbledon semi finalist, though is very much in the twilight of his career. At the height of his career he was ranked as high as 4th in the world, though so far this year he has only manged 6 wins from 15 matches on tour and dropped to 60th in the world rankings.

This will be Andy Murray’s first singles match on British soil this year and the first grass tour event he has played in nearly 2 years after he missed out on the grass court season last year due to injury. Since Murray has no ranking points to defend this week, a good performance at Queens Club could see the current world number 11 move into the worlds top 10 ahead of Wimbledon.

Murray will be aiming to make it a hat-trick of French wins adding to his win over the French pairing of Richard Gasquet and Nicolas Mahutg yesterday in his doubles match with his partner Daniel Vallverdu.