Andy Murray reaping benefit of fitness work says coach Ivan Lendl
Channel: sports videos
Date: 2017-06-09

Andy Murray reaping benefit of fitness work says coach Ivan Lendl

Andy Murray is beginning to reap the benefits of his return to full fitness, according to coach Ivan Lendl.

From hugely unpromising beginnings, the world No 1 has progressed through the French Open draw to another Grand Slam semi-final.
He will face Stan Wawrinka on Friday looking to repeat last year's victory, which earned him a first final appearance at Roland Garros.

Lendl has reunited with Murray for the first tournament since the Australian Open having watched his charge's struggles from afar.

But he insisted he was not too concerned because he knew illness and injury had badly affected Murray's training.

Lendl said: "Obviously winning is better but I knew the reasons why he is struggling. It was just a bit of bad luck.

"With the shingles and the elbow and then flu and then another flu and so on and so on. You just need to put in consistent work before you can expect consistent results.

"He's won five matches and I'm hoping he can win one more tomorrow."

Murray and Lendl got back to basics in the week before the tournament - once Murray had got over his latest illness.

The Scot admitted the drills were "pretty boring" but they have had the desired effect, with Murray now resembling the player who dominated the second half of last season.

He said: "When I'm getting into longer rallies now, I feel like I'm sort of in autopilot a little bit, like I know what I should be doing, and I'm hitting the ball in the right place.
"Whereas in Madrid (where he lost his second match to Borna Coric), I didn't know which shots to play. I was rushing a little bit in long rallies. I was making poor decisions.

"So I'm thinking less on the court. I think when things aren't going well, it's very easy to overthink things. You can be worrying about technique, which is never good when you're playing matches.

"And I was still feeling a little bit like that at the beginning of the tournament, the first match. But I got through that and that made a huge, huge difference to me."

Murray's first win in Paris was against Andrey Kuznetsov, and further victories have followed against Martin Klizan, Juan Martin del Potro, Karen Khachanov and Kei Nishikori to set-up the Wawrnka showdown on Friday.
PARIS (AP) Kei Nishikori’s French Open ended with an appropriately erratic performance against top-ranked Andy Murray in the quarterfinals.

The 2-6, 6-1, 7-6 (0), 6-1 score and the manner of the defeat fittingly reflected how inconsistently Nishikori had been playing. In his previous four matches at Roland Garros, he twice won a set 6-0 and twice lost a set 6-0.

So it was a bit of a guess which Nishikori would turn up Wednesday at a sunny but somewhat windy Court Philippe Chatrier.

Murray got a taste of the Nishikori’s stylish shot-making in the first set, then saw Nishikori carelessly give points away in the second set, disintegrate completely after forcing a third-set tiebreaker and lose six straight games despite securing an early break in the fourth set.

“For sure I need more consistency. I should, you know, maintain the level like I did in the first set,” the eighth-seeded Japanese player said. “I think my serve got a little bit bad today, missing too many first serves.”

Murray was happy to profit.

“He played, you know, a very bad tiebreak and a bad game where I broke him in the fourth set, and also in the second (set),” said Murray, listing the errors. “Today (he) was maybe more erratic than usual, but I do think a little bit of that was to do with the conditions being difficult.”

It was a far cry from Nishikori’s five-set win against Murray in the quarterfinals of last year’s U.S. Open, where he had trailed 2-1 in sets before turning the tables on Murray.

When Wednesday’s humiliating tiebreaker ended, a dejected Nishikori took out his aggression on his racket by hurling it down.

His body language spoke increasingly of a player heading for trouble.

After he broke Murray at the start of the fourth set to raise his hopes of a comeback, Nishikori immediately lost his serve. He stood glumly at the far side of the court with his back to Murray, his arms stretched out against the backstop of the court, his head down between them.

The match was still evenly poised – it was only 1-1 – yet it seemed as if Nishikori knew he’d missed his chance.

He was right.

The next five games flew by in a blur of Murray’s winners and Nishikori’s unforced errors: One player commanding from the front foot, the other backing off toward defeat.

When Murray broke him again and held for love, making it 4-1, Nishikori sat slumped forward with a towel draped over his head.

He simply never looked capable of launching a comeback. Instead, he seemed listless, almost resigned to losing to Murray for the ninth time in their 11 career matches.“