PARIS (AP)—Andy Murray will have to raise his game in Paris if he is going to have any chance of fulfilling his ambition of winning a Grand Slam singles title.
The fourth-seeded Briton reached the second round of the French Open with a 6-4, 6-1, 6-3 win over French qualifier Eric Prodon on Tuesday, but the score didn’t reflect the story.
Facing a player having won only one match on the ATP tour in his career, Murray never seemed at ease on Court Suzanne Lenglen and lost his cool several times during the match, visibly annoyed by his opponent’s drop shots.
“It was a tough match. There was no rhythm really to the match,” Murray said. “He didn’t want to have any long rallies, so he was hitting a lot of drop shots, going for shots. He’d change the rhythm or change the pace of the ball a lot.”
Murray, whose best result at the clay-court Grand Slam is reaching the quarterfinals two years ago, acknowledged he was unhappy about the way he moved on the court.
“I hardly won a point when he had drop shots today,” Murray said. “I was getting to most of them, just not really doing much with them. So I will do some work on that tomorrow on the practice court.”
Murray will play Simone Bolelli of Italy, another qualifier, and still has time to adjust after benefiting from an easy draw. If things go as expected for him, he will take his first real test in the quarterfinals with a potential clash against eighth-seeded Juergen Melzer.
Playing at a major for only the second time, the 124th-ranked Prodon broke Murray in the ninth game with a backhand drop shot but immediately lost his serve and the set.
Murray then lost only 11 points in the second set and broke Prodon three times in the third.
“I was told going in he’s very unpredictable,” Murray said. “That’s how it was. That’s why it was a difficult match and just a quite frustrating one to play, because even though I was in front, all of the points were just really scrappy.”
Murray went through a four-match losing streak after the Australian Open but has had a good clay-court season, reaching the semifinals in Monte Carlo and Rome.
He is without a coach after parting ways with Alex Corretja in March. At the French Open, he is getting some help from Darren Cahill—who used to coach Andre Agassi—and Sven Groeneveld.
“He’s got a lot of experience,” Murray said. “And he knows that it’s normal not to feel your best in the first match, that it’s tricky conditions, and the most important thing is to get through.”