Bautista-Agut followed by another and then Dimitrov is quite a sticky line-up. Glad that he got off the court quickly today - after Paris, would guess that's a priority whenever possible.

indiana wrote:

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Ha Ha, Madeline, you just beat me to it re no mention about that Scottish laddie's win.

R3 : (3) Andy Murray WR 5 beat (27) Roberto Bautista Agut (ESP) WR 23 6-2 6-3 6-2

R4 : (3) Andy Murray WR 5 vs (20) Kevin Anderson (RSA) WR 18.

A very comfortable, accomplished win by Andy, and great how his back surgery seems to have helped restore his backhand to former potentness.

I was expecting more from Bautista Agut, but in truth he lacked the weapons to cause an on form Andy any particular difficulties. Did suggest just close to the end that he could have offered a bit more of a fight, and there had maybe been an element of stage fright ( though he was probably initially encouraged by a bit of loss of focus from Andy ). Still clear he was never going to have been a serious danger.

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I was on Centre Court today and it turned out to be a good day to be there, with 4 former champs on show (1 reigning, obviously!), an excellent women's match between 2 of them (Petra and Venus) and, while not an edge of the seat Murraycoaster, just about the most fluently I have seen Andy play on grass.

Plenty of visual evidence that his back operation is turning out to be a success and while Bautista Agut didn't give him the kind of test that a top 10 player would,  I certainly didn't think the Spaniard was a pushover, even if he did fall over a lot! (you'd think having won a grass court title last week, he wouldn't be doing that so much)

He is the kind of player Andy often drops a set to in the first week of a slam, so that kind of scoreline (and the 3rd set scoreline could have been even better) is very encouraging and I thought it was a really excellent performance overall.

Centre Court isn't usually very noisy if Andy is never really in significant trouble but although it wasn't that loud today, there was quite a fun, boisterous party atmosphere. Some idiotic shouts, of course (will they never realise that "come on Tim" ceased to be funny after the very first time someone shouted it at an Andy match? ... or perhaps even the first time!), but for me the best laugh came when someone behind me shouted out "Do it for Maggie!" (referring to his dog, of course) and the comments of a woman near me to the person she was with made it clear that she thought they were shouting about the late former Prime Minister and she couldn't work out for the life of her why.