Andy Murray continued where he left off in Washington, beating Lorenzo Sonego to advance at the Canadian Open.
Murray played a fairly decent event in Washington last week, which was a positive sign. He played decent tennis at this time as well but struggled greatly with the heat and humidity. He's doing far better this year which is reflected in his results.
It's not by chance, as he specifically prepared for it, knowing that this part of the season is notorious for those tricky conditions. His first match since the Citi Open exit was against tricky Lorenzo Sonego, who is like Pandora's box.
You never know what you're going to get and he was pretty solid for a good portion of this match. He was up 5-4 and had 40-15 on the serve of Murray but wasted two huge set points. Sonego's focus started to drop after that as Murray largely cruised in the tiebreak.
It was 7-3 for the Brit, who was unbothered by Sonego, who was having one of his typical drops in level. That drop bled over into the second set as Murray jumped out to a 3-0 lead, and that was pretty much the end of the match. It was the first victory at the Canadian Open for Murray in years (since 2015).
Far from an ideal match for him but he stepped up when he needed to and it won him the match. Good enough today but he'll need to be better in the coming rounds. A mediocre serving performance with only 1 ace and 4 doubles faults.
He also only had 12 winners and 12 unforced errors but baited 18 unforced errors from Sonego. The final score was 7-6(3) 6-0 for the Brit who will face either Auger-Aliassime or Max Purcell in the next round.