For Andy Murray at 'La Caja Magica', or the 'Magic Box', Tuesday evening's 7-6, 6-4 victory over Simone Bolelli in Madrid contained a series of unexpected and tricky 'abracadabra moments'.
On his first appearance as the new world No 3, Murray had to contend with some weird and not-so-wonderful bounces on the clay, plus clattering over a sign and bashing his knee against the umpire's chair, the belief that most of the net-cords fell in Bolelli's favour, and a line-call on his set point that left him so astonished that he stood there with his hand covering his mouth.
And yet, despite all that, Murray beat the Italian in straight sets, having saved a couple of set points in the first set tiebreak, to reach the third round at his last tournament before the French Open, and he will next play Tommy Robredo, a Spaniard who has won more matches on clay this season than anyone else on the tour.
Although Murray is ranked some 58 places above Bolelli, there was not much between them on the second court at the 'Magic Box', and the Briton was pleased at going through in straight sets, winning a tight match in straight sets. The Spanish capital is around 650 metres above sea-level, so the ball was always going to be flying more than at most tournaments, and Bolelli, the world No 61, was not afraid to go for his shots, hitting plenty of forehands that fizzed through the thin air. Murray felt as though Bolelli did the best out of the net-cords, as there were a few occasions when the ball hit the tape and dribbled over for a winner.
When Murray had his first set point in the tiebreak at 6-4, he hit a first serve out wide and believed it had been a clean ace. But the official came down from his chair, looked at the mark and called the serve 'out'. Murray double-faulted, firing his second serve long. Bolelli saved another set-point, and when the players changed ends at 6-6, Murray immediately did his own inspection of the mark, and could not believe that the umpire had judged the ball to have landed in the tramlines, which led to that hand-on-mouth gesture. Murray had to stave off two of Bolelli's set points before he converted his fourth set point, winning the shoot-out 11-9. And not everything went Murray's way in the second set either.
"I was very, very sure that the serve was in on that set point, and I was even more certain when I went to look at the mark, and that was tough to come back from," said Murray afterwards.
At about the same time that Murray went through, Anne Keothavong was beaten in the women's tournament, losing 6-1, 7-5 in the second round to Czech Lucie Safarova, having had a set point at 5-4 in the second set.
When Robredo came from a set down to defeat Mardy Fish, of the United States, that took his total for victories on clay courts this year to 21 matches, having won two titles on the surface in South America in February.
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