Make sure you read the earlier post on Day 6 action!

How often does this happen?

You’ve played ATP World Team Championship with your fellow Serb, Viktor Troicki, and won this Davis Cup wannabe tournament on clay against Germany.

You come into the French Open feeling pretty good about your form. You beat two guys that play well on the dirt in the first two rounds: Albert Montanes of Spain and Feliciano Lopez of Spain. Your third round match is against someone that still finds clay unfriendly, a guy, despite his number 3 seeding that has never made it past the third round of any major clay event until this year.

You’ve told the press that you think you can expose Andy Murray’s lack of clay court prowess by making him move around. When the match starts, you get a two break lead.

And then.

Andy Murray begins to come back. He breaks once. He breaks a second time. He takes the first set in a tiebreak.

And then the second set starts, and you get broken again. Worse still–a groin injury! You call the trainer. You get a rubdown. This isn’t looking good.

But you break back. Your opponent is furious. You hold serve. It’s 2-1. Then, Murray holds, but you’re not feeling 100%. You lose the next serve. It’s 3-2. Then, he holds again and you fight to hold your own serve. 5-3. And then another break of your serve. It’s 6-3. Two sets down. An injury to deal with. You decide, that’s enough. You tell the umpire you must retire. You shake your opponent’s hand. You leave, disappointed at the chances you had.

Andy Murray makes it to the fourth round of Roland Garros for the very first time as Janko Tipsarevic retires due to injury. It’s impressive that the highest seeds almost never have injury problems (aside from Djokovic), as if they have some secret training that only they are told about. Players retire during matches all the time, but rarely does it affect any of the top seeds.

Andy Murray is now on a tour of former Yugoslavia. After playing Serb, Tipsarevic, up next is the Croat, Marin Cilic. Cilic has yet to drop a set with victories over Henrych of the Czech Republic (age: 29, rank: 74), Sela of Israel (age: 24, rank: 55), and Stepanek also of the Czech Republic (age: 30, rank: 29). Ranked 13 in the world, he’s likely to give Murray a huge fight.

Murray has beaten him twice in head-to-head matches, once in Madrid. No, not the Madrid that was just played on clay two weeks ago: the one played last year indoors. Both head-to-head matches were close matches on faster surfaces.

In other news, Swede Robin Soderling beat Spaniard David Ferrer in four sets: 6-7 (5), 7-5, 6-2, 7-6 (5). Soderling gets the pleasure of playing Rafael Nadal in the fourth round.

On Day 7, the French are out in force. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga plays Christophe Rochus. This will be Rochus’s third Frenchman in three rounds (first round: Santoro, second round: Clement). Roger Federer plays Paul-Henri Mathieu. Gael Monfils plays Jurgen Melzer. Jeremy Chardy plays Tommy Haas. Andy Roddick plays Marc Giquel.

Other top matches are Novak Djokovic against Philipp Kohlschreiber and Juan Martin del Potro against Igor Andreev.