Taiwan’s Jason Jung was knocked out of the first round of the French Open in straight sets on Sunday, while Andy Murray said it was going to be “difficult” for the former world No. 1 to reach his level of old after he also fell to a lopsided defeat by fellow three-time Grand Slam champion Stan Wawrinka.
Jung fell to a 7-5, 7-6 (8/6), 7-6 (7/3) defeat to Argentina’s Federico Coria in 3 hours, 19 minutes at Roland Garros, despite hitting 55 winners.
Jung served for both the first and second sets, then failed to convert two set points at 5-4 in the third.
Photo: EPA-EFE
It was world No. 125 Jung’s second defeat to the world No. 98 this season after the Argentine also knocked him out in the first round of the US Open earlier this month.
Murray suffered his joint-worst defeat at a Grand Slam in terms of games won, succumbing to 2015 champion Wawrinka 6-1, 6-3, 6-2 in the opening day’s marquee match.
“I need to have a long, hard think about it. It’s not for me the sort of match I would just brush aside and not give any thought to,” Murray told reporters. “I should be analyzing that hard and trying to understand why the performance was like that.”
Murray was competing in a clay-court tournament for the first time since his five-set loss to Wawrinka in their 2017 French Open semi-final.
The Scotsman, who cited that match as “the end of my hip,” has been running a long battle ever since with an injury that at one stage threatened to destroy his career.
“It’s going to be difficult for me to play the same level as I did before,” Murray said. “I’m 33 now and I was ranked No. 1 in the world, so it’s difficult with all the issues that I have had, but I’ll keep going.”
Wawrinka fired 42 winners past a subdued Murray, who made barely a third of his first serves and was broken six times.
“From a physical perspective, I wouldn’t expect to physically be the same as what I was before I had the operation, but in terms of like ball striking, and in terms of my strokes and stuff … there is no reason that I shouldn’t be able to do that from a technical perspective.”
Shohei Ohtani and his wife arrived in South Korea with his Los Angeles Dodgers teammates yesterday ahead of their season-opening games with the San Diego Padres next week. Ohtani, wearing a black training suit and a cap backwards, was the first Dodgers player who showed up at the arrival gate of Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul. His wife, Mamiko Tanaka, walked several steps behind him. As a crowd of fans, many wearing Dodgers jerseys, shouted his name and cheered slogans, Ohtani briefly waved his hand, but did not say anything before he entered a limousine bus with his wife. Fans held placards
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