Monte Carlo - Andy Murray reflects on his shock loss to Albert Ramos-Vinolas in the round of 16 at the Monte Carlo Masters on Thursday.
The world number one was in a dominant position in the final
set, 4-0 up, before he was worn down by the relentless Spaniard and lost the
decider 7-5.
Murray blamed the loss on his tactical choices in the clutch
moments.
"A few times today, I made some bad decisions,"
revealed the Scot on atpworltour.com.
"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.
"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."
While not using it as an excuse, Murray has been protecting
his recovering elbow during training by not going at full intensity. In
addition, he admitted that he did not 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," he said
"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.
"You can be hitting the ball great, but you're not hitting it in the right places. That's an important part of my game, playing the correct way in terms of tactics, hitting the ball in the right spots. I don't hit the ball as hard as a lot of the guys. I normally beat guys by manoeuvring them around the court rather than blasting them off the court."