Paris, November 13: Fourth seed Andy Murray was sent packing from the Paris Masters on Thursday as his efforts of the last two weeks caught up with him and he lost 1-6, 6-3, 6-4 to Radek Stepanek of the Czech Republic in a third round tie.
The 22-year-old Scot did have a plausible excuse for his lacklustre display in that he did not complete his marathon second round tie against American James Blake until 1:45 am the previous night.
He has also played six matches in 10 days having won a season-best sixth title of the year at Valencia on Sunday, his first tournament back after taking five weeks off to heal an injury to his left wrist.
Despite that, Murray was in total control in the first set against an opponent who had failed to take a single set from him in four previous encounters.
But as soon as 30-year-old Stepanek jumped out into a 3-0 lead in the second set, the energy appeared to drain away from Murray who started to drag his feet and mutter to himself.
The Czech player broke serve again to open the third set and when he broke again in the seventh game to go 5-2 up there was no way back for the Scot who will turn his attentions to the ATP World Tour Finals taking place in London from November 22-29.
Murray agreed that it had not been the ideal preparation for him finishing so late the night before in the second round.
“I said last night it was going to be difficult to come back and feel 100 percent. It’s obviously limited recovery after a long match,” he said.
“But you still come out and you try to give it your best shot. It wasn’t good enough.”
Stepanek, a losing finalist here in 2004, goes through to a quarter-final tie against either US Open champion Juan Martin del Potro of Argentina or Fernando Gonzalez of Chile who were playing later Thursday.
—IST