Italian tennis has seen better days, at least, on the men’s side.  The women seem to be doing fine.  Once, players like Adriano Pannatta would give Bjorn Borg all he could handle on clay.  Today, Andreas Seppi is the highest ranked Italian player at 47.  Seppi is a solid clay courter.  Steady enough to hit from the back.  He can hit winners if provided set-up shots.  Not the biggest hitter in the world.

Still, Seppi probably liked his chances against a struggling Andy Murray.

Murray, as you know, has been in a bit of a funk.  He’s lost three matches in a row.  A 2nd round loss to Phillipp Kohlschreiber in Monte Carlo (Murray had a bye in the 1st round).  A 2nd round loss to Mardy Fish in Miami (again, a bye) in a tournament where he was defending champ.  A quarterfinal loss to Robin Soderling in Indian Wells.

After his loss to Kohlschreiber, a straight-set thumping, Team Murray moved to Barcelona, site of his training days as a junior.  The goal, apparently, was to get him match tough by playing a variety of opponents.  Team Murray took a road trip, mostly because Eyjafjallajökull, that unpronounceable Icelandic volcano (A-yah-Fee-yah-Lah-Yok-ll or something like that) was causing all manners of delays in air travel.  Although a tournament was being played simultaneously in Barcelona, Murray was content being on the practice court.

Murray’s strategy seemed to be “go back to what works”.  Having not grown up on clay, Murray has battled with how best to play on the surface.  Should he play clay like he plays hard courts?  Should he try to play like clay courters?  Typical clay court tennis involves moving the other player around, looking for an opportunity, and unleashing a winner.  This sounds like fast court play, but clay court play involves more topspin and potentially hitting many more shots to win a point.  Clay courts also encourage a greater use of drop shots.  With players playing up to 10 feet behind the baseline and the surface able to absorb energy and letting balls die, drop shots are seen more frequently on clay than any other surface.

Murray wanted to avoid the upset bug that zapped Federer out of the tournament.  Although Gulbis is a very dangerous opponent, more so than Seppi, Murray’s success on clay has been far worse than Federer and he had been slumping.

Murray’s strategy was, more or less, to play how he plays on hard courts.  He would slice a lot of balls, move the ball around.  The one concession he made to the slow surface was to attack more off his backhand.  This was in contrast to the heavy looping style he used against Kohlschreiber to ill effect.

Murray started off quick.  He held, then broke serve.  Then, Murray got into trouble and had to save break points.  Murray gets into such problems often, and you can tell when he’s playing well when he digs himself out of break points.  Murray was eventually able to play a long game and break Seppi a second time and won the first set, 6-2.

In the second set, Murray was able to break early again, and was on the verge of breaking a second time, but couldn’t do it, as Seppi held.  Seppi, for his part, was making quite a few unforced errors, and this prevented him from bothering Murray much.  He did have one last hurrah.  As Murray served for the match, Murray hit a drop shot.  Seppi chased it down, and Murray lobbed the shot over Seppi, who then could only manage a tweener.  That shot went up the line and hit the line to bring the score to 30-15.  Murray then hit a huge serve to 40-15, and a few points later, won the match, 6-2, 6-4.

Murray’s likely opponent is David Ferrer who will still need to get past Potito Starace, one of the other Italians in the tournament.  Ferrer would probably be favored in that match, mostly because he’s played so well on clay.  Ferrer beat Korolev, 6-4, 6-1, in the usual way.  Korolev, formerly of Russia and now playing for Kazakhstan, goes for shots and Ferrer gets them back, making him something of a human backboard, but one that can hit winners if you let him.

Bellucci took three sets to beat Mayer and has been having a solid clay season.  On Wednesday, Soderling, Nadal, Kohlschreiber, Verdasco, and Ferrer will play.  Berdych will play Wawrinka, Tsonga against Troicki, and Lopez against Cilic.