Tennis

Four Brits in China Open main draw as Andy Murray handed tough schedule in Beijing


Dan Evans and Cameron Norrie joined Andy Murray and Kyle Edmund in the main draw of the China Open to give Beijing a slightly British feel.

The Chinese are making final preparations for large-scale celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the country’s birth as a communist nation.

But all four top British men will be flying the flag, with Murray boosted by the news that the Alex de Minaur – the man he so nearly beat on Thursday in Zhuhai – continued to sweep all before him to lift the trophy itself with a 7-6, 6-4 win over Adrian Mannarino.

Evans, meanwhile, had to come from a set down against Vasek Popisil to earn a first-round clash with home hope Zhe Li today.

Norrie likewise made a slow start, recovering to beat Damir Dzumhur 1-6, 6-3, 6-4 and reacquaints himself with Christian Garin of Chile, a regular adversary on the Junior Circuit.

Murray does not face dangerous big-serving eighth seed Matteo Berrettini until Tuesday.

The Italian has established himself as one of the ATP Tour’s most promising young talents with his monstrous serve.

Speaking in Zhuhai, Murray meanwhile revealed that he thinks he is playing at “top 60” level at the moment after losing to De Minaur.

He explained: “I’m not playing top 20, top 30 tennis right now, I’m probably playing top 70, top 60, sort of level. So it’s not going to be that easy for me to win matches there [in Beijing].

“However, I can still make a few improvements in the next couple of days. I think, what, it’s Thursday night, so I’ll get a chance to rest from this week the next couple of days and then hopefully get a couple of good days practice there in Beijing and wait and see what happens with the draw.

“There’s a lot of good players there and I could play a top 10 player in the first round and I wouldn’t be expecting to win that match right now.

“I think that my movement is much better than it was about six weeks ago, eight weeks ago when I was competing, that was the main thing.

“It’s nice to finish a long match like that and not have pain in my hip and problems sleeping and stuff afterwards. So that’s nice, it’s not something that I have to worry about as such.

“Yesterday was the first time in my entire career that I didn’t practice the day before a match. I was tired after the first round and tried to sort of rest and recover as much as possible, so that was something that I have done differently.

“I’m trying to maybe look at just other ways to give my body a bit of a break and a rest when I can, which is maybe something in the past that I wouldn’t have done, I would have been in the courts yesterday practicing and stuff.

“So some things I’m trying to do differently to work out what the best thing is for my body just now. But I learned that my hip held up well after two pretty long matches.

“But the rest of my body is just tired, which is I guess normal. With the amount of tennis I played recently, it’s not really been loads and at this level playing two and a half-hour matches is tough and it takes time to get used to that.”



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