Three-time Grand Slam winner Andy Murray, playing at Swiss Indoors in Basel for the first time in 17 years, reached second round after a come-from-behind win against Russian qualifier Roman Safiullin on Tuesday.
Murray’s only other appearance at the ATP500 event had come in 2005 when he was a teenager.
It took Murray two hours and 38 minutes to win 6-7 (5), 6-3, 6-4 against World No. 93 Safiullin in the pair’s first-ever tour-level meeting. This is his 26th win of the season, the most he has recorded since 2016 when he finished the year as World No. 1.
Murray got his serve broken in the fourth game of the opening set but broke back immediately to bring things back on serve. Safiullin, down 3-4 in the tiebreaker, won four of the next five points to clinch the first set which lasted almost an hour.
“He was serving huge and any opportunity he was hitting the ball huge from the back of the court,” Murray told atptour.com after the match. “As the match went on, I started to dictate a few more points and served better. I changed the way I was returning a little bit and when I did that I was able to create a few more opportunities and frustrate him a little bit.”
The Scot, currently ranked 49, won the second set after breaking Safiullin in the sixth game.
The Russian got the early break to go 4-1 up in the deciding third set before Murray reeled off five games in a row to seal the victory. He will next face either Spaniard Roberto Bautista Agut or Serbian Laslo Djere.
Murray is looking for his first title since winning in Antwerp 2019. In 2022, he has reached two finals - Sydney and Stuttgart.
In the other first-round matches, fifth-seeded Spaniard Pablo Carreno Busta beat Argentine Sebastian Baez 6-2, 6-1 while Slovakia’s Alex Molcan won 5-7, 6-4, 7-5 against American Mackenzie McDonald.
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