Olympic champion Andy Murray won his opening match in the Rogers Cup on Wednesday, beating Italy’s Flavio Cipolla 6-1, 6-3.
Murray, the second-seeded Briton who beat Roger Federer on Sunday in London for the gold medal, set up a third-round match against Canada’s Milos Raonic. Raonic advanced on Tuesday.
“I felt OK this morning when I practiced and decided to give it a go,” Murray said. “I feel a little sore in the joints and stuff a little bit. I mean I feel tired mentally. I haven’t really slept much in the last few days so that’s probably catching up to me a little bit.”
“But I hit the ball pretty well. After playing for eight weeks on grass pretty much, it’s very different here. The ball is very quick compared with Wimbledon. It also bounces much higher. The court is much slower as well. So there are a lot of things to change,” he said.
Raonic beat Murray in the Barcelona semi-finals nearly four months ago.
“Yeah, it will be tough,” Murray said. “He’ll obviously be motivated playing in his own country. You know he’s improved a lot over the last year, year-and-a-half. He’s playing really, really good tennis. Very big guy with a big game. Serves well and hits the ball very hard.”
Raonic advanced on Tuesday.
Top-seeded Novak Djokovic also won, beating Bernard Tomic 6-2, 6-3. Djokovic won the event in 2007 and last year.
“Obviously, for the first match it was a decent performance,” Djokovic said. “I was struggling to find the rhythm, obviously, as most of the players who came late from London do and did.”
“It’s really difficult. We’re not even two days here, a couple of practices and it’s totally different conditions, time zone, ball bounce, everything. But I love playing on hard court. It’s my surface,” Djokovic said said.
In the women’s section at Montreal, Maria Sharapova withdrew because of a stomach ailment.
In other men’s second-round matches, fourth-seeded Tomas Berdych edged Julien Benneteau 6-7 (10), 6-4, 6-4; Jeremy Chardy upset third-seeded Jo-Wilfried Tsonga 6-4, 7-6 (4); fifth-seeded Janko Tipsarevic beat Mikhail Youzhny 7-6 (2), 6-4; Radek Stepanek topped sixth-seeded Juan Martin del Potro 6-4, 7-6 (5); Tommy Haas beat ninth-seeded Gilles Simon 6-2, 6-3; and Sam Querrey edged No. 13 Kei Nishikori 6-2, 6-3.
The second-ranked Sharapova told organizers she picked up the bug at the London Olympics, where she lost the final to Serena Williams. Sharapova was replaced in the draw by Galina Voskoboeva.
In women’s second-round matches, fifth-seeded Petra Kvitova rallied to beat Ksenia Pervak 4-6, 7-6 (0), 6-0.
Kvitova, last year’s Wimbledon champion, quickly finished off Pervak after the match was delayed for 30 minutes by rain with the players tied 4-4 in the second set.
Eighth-seeded Sara Errani beat Jana Cepelova 6-3, 6-2, and 16th-seeded Lucie Safarova edged Sesil Karatantcheva 6-4, 6-4.
In first-round play, 18-year-old Canadian Eugenie Bouchard beat Shahar Peer 3-6, 6-2, 7-5. Americans Christina McHale and Varvara Lepchenko also won first-round matches. McHale beat Arantxa Rus 3-6, 6-1, 6-3, and Lepchenko topped Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova 6-2, 6-3.
McHale will face Voskoboeva in the second round.
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