Andy Murray acknowledged it was “really tough” against Lorenzo Sonego but noted that he knew the Italian was an aggressive player who would come out and just go for it.
Murray, who received a main draw wildcard into Dubai, saved three match points to beat Sonego in the first round 4-6 6-1 7-6 (4).
“It was really tough. We never played together, or practised with each other before, so I didn’t know exactly how the match was going to go and it took a while to get used to his game. He’s a very aggressive player, takes a lot of chances, but it’s high-risk tennis. He rolled the dice at the end, and it looked like he had the momentum. But thankfully in the mid-part of that tie-break he made a couple of mistakes and I managed to turn it around,” Murray said, per the ATP website.
How Murray defeated Sonego?
Murray got off to a slow start to the match, losing his service in the very first game of the match.
Up by an early break, Sonego held on to his serve the rest of the first set to win the opener.
After losing the first set, Murray bounced back as he started the second set with back-to-back breaks and a 5-0 lead.
In the seventh game, Murray routinely served out for the second set.
After easily winning the second set, Murray had a break point in the first game of the third set but didn’t realize.
With Sonego leading 5-4 and Murray serving to stay in the match – the Italian had three match points – but the Briton saved them all to tie the third set to five games apiece.
After blowing three match points, Sonego started the third-set tie-break with a 3-0 lead.
But Murray impressively responded, winning the next six points to take a 6-3 lead and clinch three consecutive match points.
Sonego saved the first match point but Murray realized his second match point to set up a Dubai round-of-16 meeting against Alexander Zverev.
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