Bad decisions cost me Monte Carlo title: Murray

Johannesburg [South Africa] Apr. 21 : World number one Andy Murray, who slumped to a shocking third-round exit in the ongoing Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters, has admitted some bad decisions during the match led to his loss against World No.24 Albert Ramos-Vinolas of Spain.

Ramos-Vinolas recovered from a 0-4 defeat in the deciding set to register a 2-6, 6-2, 7-5 win over Murray in a disjointed pre-quarterfinals match, which featured 13 service breaks and lasted over two hours and 33 minutes.

Following the defeat, Murray blamed the defeat on his tactical choices in the clutch moments. "A few times today, I made some bad decisions. That's something that, with my team, I'll look at, watch some parts of the match over, see the shots that I chose and what I would do differently.

At 4-0, one of the service games where I got broken, I didn't play such a good game," Sport24 quoted him as saying.

Murray admitted that although both of them performed well throughout the match, his Spanish opponent did outplay him towards the end of the set.

"Then he obviously started playing better towards the end of the set. I still had a bunch of chances. I guess both of us did really. I think at 4-All, he had 0/40, too. I certainly struggled a bit at the end of the match," Murray said. The 29-year-old, who has been protecting his recovering elbow during training by not going at full intensity, also admitted that he failed to adjust quickly enough to playing on the slower clay surface.

"I had to go a little bit easy when I first came back from the elbow. Whereas now, I'm ready to really to put in some hard work. When you play on a new surface, you haven't played many matches for a while, you sometimes lose the right way to play," he said.

With the win, Ramos-Vinolas denied Murray, a three-time semi-finalist at the tournament, his 100th clay-court match victory of his career (99-44).

The top-seeded, who was playing for the first time since March 12 due to a right elbow injury, was bidding to capture his 15th ATP World Tour Masters 1000 title.

Source: ANI