Andy Murray races into third round at Australian Open

Britain’s Andy Murray serves during his second round match against Australia’s Sam Groth at the Australian Open tennis tournament at Melbourne Park, Australia, January 21, 2016.

It will be a huge match for Groth as he steps onto the Rod Laver Arena, and one has to wonder whether he can handle the nerves against one of the best players in the world.

Murray drilled down with two more service breaks in the third set to wrap up a convincing win, with Groth finishing in pain from an apparent twisted right ankle as he made a net approach in the final game. He converted seven out of the 14 break point chances that he achieved.

Indeed, they were 36 minutes into the struggle before Groth put one cleanly past Murray’s racket, 227kph wide of his forehand in the second game of the second set and he still couldn’t hold. The Australian is hopeful that he will have to serve and play aggressive but he also joked about not having to play the match at all if Murray’s wife goes into early labor. But it was only a momentary wobble for Murray, who broke at 5-4 to pocket the second set. However, the second set was already 3-1 in Murray’s advantage at that point, and the mismatch was painfully obvious for the Australian fans.

Murray sealed the win with an ace and was off court within 90 minutes. From there, Murray finished the straight-sets victory, 6-0, 6-4, 6-1.

Murray will face either 32nd seed Joao Sousa or Colombian Santiago Giraldo in the third round.

“Hopefully I will serve well and it doesn’t come back”, Groth said. Wolfe was trailing 6-0 4-2.

“I was really happy I happened to win that service game, because didn’t have much warmup and had to start serving straight up”, she said.

Murray offered some words in his post-match interview, per the Australian Open, and said, “It’s nice to play different game styles, a lot of the players play quite a similar game nowadays, and Sam’s has always seemed quite different, coming to the net a lot”.