Wednesday, May 17 2006 15:09 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Hamburg (Germany): Britain's Andy Murray, tipped as a top ten player of the near future, earned a plum second round encounter with James Blake, the world number seven from the United States, after recording his best win for three months.



Murray won a battle of 19-year-olds with Gael Monfils, the world number 26 from France by 6-4, 6-1, ending a worrying run of only two wins in six tournaments since beating Lleyton Hewitt in the San Jose final in February to achieve his first ATP Tour title.

Murray was so delighted with the result and his performance that he was even prepared to reveal a few secrets of how he might tackle the in-form Blake.

"Blake plays a bit closer up to the baseline and he does like to play with his forehand. He doesn't come to the net too much he comes to knock volleys off," he said.

"If I can bring him in with short slice it's not a bad play. But the drops shots will be much tougher to do against him because he plays tighter to the baseline and plays much flatter than Monfils," Murray said.

Blake should represent a particularly tough test because he is coming off the best clay court win of his career, against former world number one Carlos Moya on Monday.

However Murray played like a man of many years experience against Monfils.

In conditions akin to the east coast of his native Scotland in winter-time, Murray played a canny, well-paced match in which he manoeuvred his harder-hitting opponent into self-destruction.

"I'm really pleased with the way I played because I had been mentally struggling," Murray admitted.

"I thought carefully about what I was going to do and listened to my i-pod and I was more fired up than in the last few weeks," he said.

"People say I should be more aggressive, but I have played against an opponent who was in a semi-final last week and I have won. There is not much I can do better," he said.

Murray did not start as though he was likely to win so comprehensively. He lost the first five points and appeared as though he might still be out of sorts.

But as the wind continued to gust, the clouds to threaten, and the clay court to churn up, Murray devised a way of coping which was very productive.

He was rarely too ambitious, but usually remained tactically positive, mixing in slow loopy drives which wobbled in the breeze, with lower, flatter ones - particularly against the wind, when they would stay low.

Breaks of serve were as commonplace as holds in the first set, though the psychological effect of Murray breaking Monfils twice in a row to reach 5-2 appeared significant.

The Frenchman broke back once, but once the first set had gone, his resistance was far less uncompromising.

Monfils continued to hit the heavier strokes and a few of the more spectacular winners, but these were not the conditions for producing them consistently, and as the second set ran away from him his morale plummeted.

At 0-2 he attempted a stop volley only to see Murray accelerate to sweep it past him, and Monfils' head conspicuously dropped. His standard fell after that as well.

The last straw was when a despairing mis-hit return of serve by Murray ballooned over the net by the narrowest of margins, only to swirl too treacherously for Monfils to put it away, and creating an opportunity for Murray to make a lob winner.

After that the end came quickly, and Monfils struggled to overcome his disappointment.

"For me it was a very bad day, how I was on court," he admitted, but then raised a laugh when asked why he had felt negative.Because I am stupid," he said.

Two of the new front-runners for the title - in the absence of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal - came through in differing styles.

Fernando Gonzalez, the fierce-hitting seventh-seeded Chilean, dismissed the improving Russian Dmitri Tursunov 6-4, 6-3 without major problems, but Gaston Gaudio, the sixth-seeded former French open champion from Argentina, had to fight much harder.

He squeezed through only by 6-2, 3-6, 6-4 against Alberto Martin, but acknowledged that he had almost as much difficulty with the windy Hamburg weather on an outside court as the seasoned clay court expert from Spain.