Australian Open 2017: Britain's Andy Murray and Dan Evans prepare for third round

  • Posted: Jan 19, 2017
Australian Open 2017
Venue: Melbourne Park, Melbourne Dates: 16-29 Jan
Coverage: Daily live commentary on BBC Radio 5 live sports extra; live text on selected matches on the BBC Sport website; TV highlights on BBC Two and online from 21 January.

Britain’s Andy Murray has no injury worries heading into his third round match against American Sam Querrey at the Australian Open on Friday.

The world number one was assessed by a doctor after rolling his right ankle in Wednesday’s win over Andrey Rublev.

Murray is due to feature in the second game on the Hisense Arena in Melbourne, where play begins at 00:30 GMT.

British number four Dan Evans is also in action as he takes on Australia’s Bernard Tomic following Murray’s match.

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Murray in pole position?

Murray admitted his ankle still felt sore on Thursday, but the Scot was able to practice unhindered and spent an hour and a half training on Court 17 at Melbourne Park.

“Thankfully I can put weight on it and I was moving around fine in practice,” said the 29-year-old. “Once I started moving around it felt all right.”

Murray has reached the Australian Open final five times and lost on each occasion, with four of those final defeats coming against Novak Djokovic.

The Scot replaced Djokovic as number one in the world last November and, after the Serb suffered a shock second-round exit to world number 117 Denis Istomin, Murray is being touted as the favourite to win in Melbourne.

“You always pick the number one in the world as favourite, so I had Andy Murray,” two-time Australian Open finalist Pat Cash told BBC Radio 5 live. “But five matches is a long way to go.”

Murray remains focused on Friday’s meeting with Querrey, who beat Djokovic at Wimbledon last year and knocked Jamie Murray and partner Bruno Soares out of the men’s doubles on Thursday.

“The most important thing will be to serve well because that then puts pressure on his service games,” said the British number one.

“I’ll just try to make as many returns as I can. Once I get in the rallies I should do OK.”

Evans eyes third round

Murray’s compatriot Evans is aiming to make it past the third round of a Grand Slam for the first time.

He previously beat Tomic in four sets in the second round of the US Open in 2013, but Tomic won their last encounter at the 2015 Davis Cup.

The pair also met in Miami in 2012 when Tomic’s father suggested Evans – then ranked in the 300s – was not good enough to practice with his son.

“I’m not going to bother saying anything about that again,” Evans said.. “He confronted me about that. We’ll leave it at that.”

Best of the rest

Defending champion and world number one Angelique Kerber will play Czech Kristyna Pliskova, four months after beating her twin Karolina in the US Open final.

Fourth seed Stan Wawrinka plays Serbian Viktor Troicki while Roger Federer will face 17th-seeded Czech Tomas Berdych.

Canadian Eugenie Bouchard, who reached the Wimbledon final in 2014, meets American Coco Vandeweghe and Venus Williams plays China’s Ying-Ying Duan.

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